The Breaking Spell
by Antje
Summary: Ambrose has kidnapped Glitch; the two are on the run. DG and Wyatt hunt for them. A mythical spell exists that can save Glitch from Ambrose, and DG's fledgling witch skills might be able to find it. Meanwhile, Az wants to get married, and DG vehemently does not want to marry until the right person comes along. A/G; DG/G/W; G/W
1. Chapter 1

**A/N** – Thanks for clicking on The Breaking Spell. It's a sequel of sorts to both Lilies to Tread and The Ordeal of Bitter Fruit. Originally supposed to be 100 drabbles (I think?), but the prompts were collected together and I made a story arc out of them. I've wanted to release it on FFN for a while, but the question arose as to how to go about it. The chapters are sometimes small, especially at the beginning. They're being collected and released in chunks of around 2500 words each, at least until later on in the story when the chapters lengthen. Each prompt is beside the versus' number, i.e. I. Winter. Some versus contain more than one prompt, and in that instance each prompt is listed. The Breaking Spell is approximately 53,000 words long, originally written in late/early 2009/2010. Also, I'm pretty sure there are a few typos in this version—sorry. Personally speaking, it has always been a favorite of my own stuff. Apologies, too, for the less-than-ideal formatting, but we all know how FFN is with its formatting. If you'd like a cleaner .doc version, please message me with your email address.

**Non-canon Pairings**: G/W/D; G/W; DG/Chessa (OFC); Az/Zero

**Note**: A full version of The Breaking Spell, properly formatted, is available in epub and mobi formats. Use the link in my profile. Please let me know if you have any trouble.

oOo

**VOLUME 1  
The Path**

I.

The cold seeped through him, hairs to bone to flesh

And seeped back out of him again, somehow, for a moment gone, then coming back in again.

The snow was deep, the first layer of it scraped and roused and sent into a dance by a new northern gift of the wind.

His toes were numb, though his boots were carbon at the toes, leather outside, to keep the damp away. No belligerence, he mused, for the bitterness.

Yet Ambrose had tolerance for this frigidity. Glitch could see him, at his back, walking tall and proud, straight into the acid storm.

How it suited him, held him in his character.

All caustic falls, ice crystals, wet, cold, cold, cold. When living things were unpleasantly dead. For Glitch understood that death held bits of its own beauty, if he angled his head, narrowed his eyes, and lost himself in it. But that was a recognition of pulchritude. Ambrose had a tolerance for death, too.

Winter was his season. The season of Ambrose.

Everything natural, that bloomed in spring and survived the blazing heat of summer

—everything natural was then rendered dead.

-x-

II.

Ignoring Ambrose held difficulty, then it had difficulties, improbabilities.

They were the same person.

Though no, no. They were not.

Lucidity left Glitch believing in what was not believable.

A fractured fairy tale of love and remorse, hate and obsession.

The dread of change.

Glitch knew the statement kept his conviction clear, if lucidity turned drear, corrupted.

Broken again like the fractured fairy tale.

The snow was at his ankles then, the woods around him. He was Glitch, still, forever and always. How about that? Amen.

But he turned about, a shuffle and a kick of the white fluff.

No sparing the shadows, no sparing his thoughts.

He was Ambrose, then as now.

He looked up and up. The naked treetops of locusts and elms fringed the cerulean empyrean. Beside one sun it rested, it winked. Ambrose scowled at it, its nonfeasance, uselessness. He looked behind him.

Glitch waded, glissaded. A masterful, graceful man.

A swan floating on a frozen home.

He looked beyond the fringe of branches, and winced into the glowing empyrean.

There it rested, a little way from the first sun.

The parhelion.

Guiding him on.

-x-

III.

The hours had a way of losing them. One by one, minutes disappeared.

They forgot them at treacherous landscapes.

One minute lost in a bog.

Another of its brethren lost in a fog.

They almost lost their way, too, on some Saturday after the journey had begun.

They had no maps, no atlas of the realms. What did they need them for?

Without a cause, they wandered.

Down on the road from Issilthrush mountain, and away again, to other mountains.

The innominate peaks, nothing in their mind, nothing but snow-capped and wearying on their eyes. They couldn't regard them without fear feasting on remaining orts of bravery. But it loosened sometimes, their want of direction, and they would consult someone.

Strangers gave them peculiar looks, and didn't Glitch know those looks? He hated to talk over his concerns with Ambrose.

Ambrose had nothing to concern him. Nothing bothered him.

"I am better than all, and all is not better than me." He said it, fancying himself free, but he was the very breath of tyranny.

"I know, my love," Glitch would then say, his placations voiced, worried disregarded. The dearest and dear bit of his heart knew the shackles of love. He watched the blackness pool in him, drowning him, night after night, when he knew Ambrose was asleep and lost in the stars.

What wouldn't he do to get away, some nights, and wander the trails of moonlight's dust? Just to get away from him—for a little while.

But it was always he that talked to the strangers. Ambrose eked what he wanted from the unsuspecting, and Glitch was irrevocably methodical: he would have to initiate a scheme, and then he would go in—not for the kill as Ambrose did, but for the friendship.

He loved people. They reminded him of DG and Raw and—oh, by the stars and the galaxies—Wyatt.

He met with a stranger in the next village. A plump little woman and her two plump girls. They wore bright colours and kerchiefs over their abundant curly locks. Their eyes were like his, big and brown and honing mischievousness, yet with melancholy constantly winning.

"Do you know where I might find a witch?"

But it wasn't his voice that asked.

Ambrose, again, whipping up the tempest. His lanceolate voice at once omniscient, inescapable.

Glitch had wanted so very badly to speak with them.

They looked like Azkadellia, didn't they?

Long faces, big, sad brown eyes?

He hated himself for running out of time to ask permission from Ambrose.

He never hated himself for long.

Such an occupation naturally belonged to the other half of him.

His malignancy and non-conformity.

Ambrose had no concept of time.

Tyranny never did.

-x-

IV.

No stranger ever knew where to find a witch.

Jokes were made, at the expense of the Sorceress That Was. "You should ask her," commonly returned to them, between sly smirks and jocosely lifted eyebrows.

But no one knew where to find a witch. They met a paunchy man once, his fat shins sticking out of galligaskins so old and threadbare, Glitch thought of museums full of handmade, sewn antiquities. Galligaskins belonged there. Those in that part of the realm wore them. Kilts in the north. Galligaskins there. He made notes in his journal. The indigenous people of the realm, he scribed, and their unusual instincts concerning haberdashery and husbandry.

They didn't dress like witches.

The galligaskins man was an old mystic. He hid the mysticism from him, but Ambrose knew it. It was in the features. A touch of the earth about him. As though it had come from the plains of some faraway planet, from the dust that made a star, and rested in him. Perhaps on his planet, the popularity of galligaskins had never waned.

"You should find yourself a path of bones, my friend," he told Ambrose. His head was taller than his hair, a white ruffled collar of it.

"A path of bones?" Ambrose repeated.

The finding of bones seemed so jolly, for a little while. On it, the man didn't waver, didn't elaborate. He said chores waited him, and withdrew.

Paths of bones haunted Glitch in his nightmares. He woke at night to find the fire fallen into coals, red and radiating. The warmth erased his cold.

"Where will we find bones?"

One by one, they might show up. A rib. A finger. A toe.

Then a skull, a leg, a femur or two. Beneath a tree, a rock, a shrub,

A meadow, come spring, full of chamomile and feverfew.

Glitch liked the nights when he woke from nightmares all alone.

It meant he was free from the ridicule of Ambrose. "Nightmares again? You're such a child."

I'm ashamed to be seen with you.

Never was this given aloud.

It rattled in Glitch's mind, one suns-set to another.

Rattled around in him like dry bones.

At night, he didn't know why it mattered, why it should come then.

But at night, at night,

He missed Wyatt the most.

-x-

V.

Wyatt was a disaster, and this is how Glitch described him.

Why love with Wyatt went against the goodness of the world.

Ambrose had nothing to say. He thought love was blind, and ridiculous to let itself be so blind. It was colourless, bland as a summer's day. Only hate was real.

Hate was worth giving away.

Ambrose had nothing to say. His smirks were silent. His footfalls garnished with miniature explosions of self-congratulations.

He had come along, a wedge of unbreakable marble, and forced himself among them.

Among the three of them. Or four of them. There was the princess to consider. But it was a ring from Wyatt that Glitch wore.

The little whore. Who needed the love of two, when there was him?

He was the all and everything to Glitch. At night, when they rested, when they'd puzzled over paths of bones, unknown witches, a lost spell, Ambrose held Glitch close. He wasn't there to forget, but to remember.

Remember, Glitch? Forget Wyatt. Forget DG.

"I'm all you need."

Glitch wished he didn't think so.

-x-

VI.

A photographic memory between two bodies, one mind, wasn't so often unkind.

So Glitch could forget, unable to forgive.

So Ambrose could remember everything that Glitch could forgive.

They walked as companions. They talked ferociously.

Glitch wanted to talk of bones, then the old conspiracy; he'd fall into tangent after tangent. A part of him, drawn to it like—like—he didn't know what. The simile avoided him.

Bones plagued him. He consciously sought them.

Beneath the pine boughs, he'd turn in circles. His coat-tails flew. With the inside of his boot, rolled leaves and eaten pine cones were unearthed, moved.

"Owl sick," Ambrose told. He enjoyed naming things before Glitch had a chance.

"Owl pellets, you mean."

Expurgation from the owls: feathers, fur from the creatures they consumed, congealed in a vomited mass, then, by Ambrose's delicate fingers, exhumed.

Little ivory sticks from the grey crumbles. Tiny bones. Mice that once were. Now little ivory sticks, tiny bones. Glitch stared at them, then dashed from them.

Ambrose cackled at Glitch's misery. "Why are you so weak? Weak! You've only ever been!"

And you're hateful and mean.

Words, minified, scarred into his tears.

I hate you, and I mean to hate you.

To do this, he had to know why he loved Ambrose.

Love came first.

Hate came second.

Fear of the two, it came third.

-x-

VII.

They pottered about the woods. A village wasn't far. The other side of the trees, maybe. Ambrose squinted through the trunks, over the amber and white ground, to perceive what he pretended he could.

It was there because he believed it to be so.

His belief was his life.

His beliefs tossed Glitch into hopeless exile.

Glitch saw less,

Heard more.

He harkened footsteps across the plain, into the woods, not content to leave again.

He swerved around.

To see this stranger, to meet him, before Ambrose!

Ambrose and his indelible watermark. His atrocious behaviour. Murder and bloodlust. He would kill the strangers they came upon, if he but could.

Ambush was best if delivered in madness.

If he kept a poniard, a falchion, what red it would spill.

Not this stranger. He would belong to Glitch.

He would, through conversation, grant normalcy to Glitch.

Before the madness set in, and brought him failure.

He saw bones again.

Everywhere now.

Little ivory sticks, teeth protruding from a mandible.

There, that—a piece of fungus—or a toe.

The man left shadows by his grey cloak.

He had the look of an approaching storm.

He could brew one, Glitch knew he could, with the staff in his hand used to stir the clouds, beg the rain to follow his command.

Men like him do not beg. They have big bones through them. Unbreakable men of steel. Like Wyatt, back home.

Glitch swallowed, writing his silent agony in tears.

-x-

VIII.

"Sir," he started. It ended in a plume from his mouth. The cloud at the man's command.

"Didn't see you standing there."

He wouldn't glance behind him, the sense of evil waiting. "No, of course, so sorry, sorry. I was wondering, if this is a bit odd, I was wondering if you've ever heard of a path of bones."

"Bones, is it? Bones aren't my business."

"No, no… Not the industry of the living. What is your business?"

This is how they met the owl hunter. He didn't hunt them for feathers or meat or purpose. He hunted them merely to find them.

"Mysterious creatures, owls." He angled back his head. The coarseness, unctuousness of his hair, black as a bear with temples grey as sabre blades, kept his hood in place.

It snowed on Glitch's face. He didn't care. The owl hunter must be regarded, and Glitch must guard against the impending Ambrose intrusion. He had won, and he'd wondered how to do it again.

Then a glint of something.

A hilt beneath the cloak.

A revolver, tucked into the holster. So neat. Viable. Violent.

On the other side, a knife.

The owl hunter caught him staring.

Glitch trembled. "Weapons are pointless against him. He'll use you."

The owl hunter glanced around. No one was there. "Who? Who will use them?"

The world bleared whenever he cried. Agonised, intimidated, it was there. It was the beauty of death he hated.

Ambrose could always make beauty out of death.

"Run," Glitch said. He shoved and shoved. The owl hunter wouldn't budge. "Please, run! Run for your life! He's coming! He's… He's coming after you…"

Sobs wrenched from him, even as he knelt.

Listening. Listening for him.

Black was the pool drowning him.

Little bones float.

At first, dead men don't.

-x-

IX.

Glitch couldn't forgive Ambrose.

"One murder," Ambrose said, touching Glitch's mouth with a provoking fingertip, the way DG used to do, before a kiss, before that pleasure of her breath over him.

Murder and gore sobered. Thoughts of love, what dreams they were. Decorated in garlands of old hair, excrescences (moles, abnormal growths), and flowers from yesteryear eaten by a vermicular lot. The stench of mould held him rapt.

He knelt as he had. His knees were stained with cold mud.

Every pore of him filled with cold.

Twilight after twilight came. Days incalculable.

He watched the body of the owl hunter leave its colour behind.

When the skies peeled away the silver lid of night,

When green whispered across the east,

Glitch let Ambrose have his way.

"I forgive you."

What else was he to do?

He needed Ambrose.

Only,

He tasted then the seed of doubt.

Why?

Wyatt and DG, they were needed.

Individual comforts for an uncanny love. But why Ambrose?

What good was he?

Ghastly. Murderous fiend.

"You've turned us into miscreants."

Glitch got up, stood with Ambrose.

It was no good, this act of forgiveness.

Compassion bled out of the owl hunter.

Death, or something like it, all over again.

"No one will miss him."

Then it wasn't murder.

It wasn't the ascension of the deed,

If, of course,

No one would miss him.

Ambrose read what, out of Glitch, might flow next.

"You'd miss me if I were dead."

Not if I killed you.


	2. Chapter 2

X. Reflection, Peril

By night, it had rained inches. They made it to town, and, from the stolen purse of the owl hunter, the money of a corpse, Ambrose bought them a room.

Glitch wouldn't settle. He waited until Ambrose had eaten.

Monsters eat when their foulness is complete.

He wanted gruel; Ambrose wouldn't let him have gruel.

"It's for an ill person."

"It's for indigestion."

"It's a grotesque meal."

"And this is me, wishing you would shut up."

He heard the crash of dinnerware, silverware, against thick porcelain plates, as he left.

The town held no charms. It was dark, lit with firestones behind glass bowls, the bowls perched up high. Cheery spurts of orange flame that thawed Glitch. There went the matchstick boy, his ladder carried on his shoulder, one post to the other.

Glitch felt lost, confused.

Beguiled by his murderous lover. Mayhem was sure to follow. Perils began to string themselves about his neck. Each threat a pearl.

This was supposed to be an easy journey. Ambrose didn't want to go alone. "I'll go with you," Glitch had said, over bathwater and bubbles, scents and plashing. "I have to go with you."

One witch.

One spell.

Simple. One and one equals two. Two things to find.

Ambrose's anger, his madness—Glitch recognised them for what they were.

Anger. Madness.

Irremediable. Inexpiable.

To escape the inescapable.

To run himself into the ground.

For one witch, one spell.

How would he endure? What would he look like, at the end? Withered, weazened. His wisdom evanished.

His steps stopped over a large puddle in the middle of the road.

Beside the pub, the horse trough, the puddle at the tip of his feet.

He stopped only to meet his reflection, himself.

Unguarded for a moment, the wisdom in him unseen. He'd been held in their arms, coddled, appreciated, kissed, adored. And now he was here.

Here, where hell and its fury disembogued.

XI. Dent, Food, Simmer

Morning saw them back into the nothingness of the realm. Surrounded by trees and the dregs of winter.

Ambrose did the cooking of breakfast. It was more than breakfast. It was too late for it. And more than toast and jam. Nominal food. Not theirs. Just taken from anywhere.

One of them missed apple butter. Missed Raw's oat bread. Missed Wyatt's morning nuzzles, DG's insatiable desire. Laughing pleas and begs fell into his ear out of the memories conditioned there. DG, warm between them. If Wyatt rolled over at her longing, she had to have Glitch. Sometimes Wyatt would wake, surprise them. Sometimes they were so loud that he woke anyway, and took from the room his annoyed body, and the wolf-dog, Chimtu. Sometimes Glitch left them, in the soft light, when the suns were waking, when their bodies glowed the most. He'd leave them, and then he would hear them. He'd laugh and smile and shake his head. Wasn't that like Wyatt? Trying to steal his girl. His girl, trying to steal his spouse.

He missed them. Their hot bodies wrapped around his limbs. Their kisses, sending him into a simmer, some cold morning, some winter's morning long past. Yet near enough. He could feel them, still, the lines of them. If he closed his eyes right then, he could glide his arm, his hand, across the curves of DG's body, across the angles of Wyatt's body. He knew every divot, dent, plain and crevice.

His feeble grin hid a titter.

Ambrose detected the defect within.

A hunt for love.

"They hated you," Ambrose told him.

He was a dictator of a heart that knew suffering, forgetfulness.

Been repaired, defeated, derailed again.

Glitch reached for the stone on which his stolen egg cooked. The logs shifted.

He clutched his wrist, crying, crying.

Ambrose laughed. He had no thought of warm bodies, morning sex, people that missed him, people to miss.

Ambrose had burned Glitch.

"Out of the fire, Glitch."

"Into the frying pan."

"They hated you," reminded Ambrose. He shoved egg in his mouth.

And next he said the words that undid the world.

Pulled it by its string and folded it back, corner by corner, block by block.

Till the black umbrella unfolded. Rib by rib. The tiny bones, another show.

"They died hating you."

So that was why Ambrose had come.

It made sense. The worst of it.

DG and Wyatt.

Of course.

They were dead.

XII. Quiet, Noise, Loquacious

Ambrose wandered, not too far, not far enough that escape tempted Glitch. But far enough away to clear the air of his remaining pestilence.

The fire burned on, the flames continuing, the ones who had burned him. And out of the pain grew the gruesome in him.

In Ambrose, he expected it. To see it fasten to him—

Unbearable and unfair.

It tore. He wasn't sure where it tore. Serrations were already on his heart, patter after patter, threaded through broken glass, somehow.

His arm burned on. The wrist had its pain gagged by garbage wraps: an old handkerchief and a slice off a stolen tea towel. The skin was raised and reddish black, wasted and hurtful. He cringed to think of it, reliving it, too many times too many.

To the top of his head, the fingertips drizzled.

Tooth for tooth, the zipper removed, but had left a hairless scar, just a fraction of an inch. He knew it was there. Wyatt used to kiss it. DG never noticed: it wasn't a scar but a part of him.

He wished to the gods and stars that now,

Now, now,

He had a chance to tell her what he hadn't then.

I'm full of scars.

Inside, outside, oh,

Oh, DG, my doll with the sapphire eyes,

The pearl mouth,

Scars across me,

everywhere.

The blanket reset across his shoulder.

His eyes moistened with the agony of loss.

What a hellish sarabande it made.

DG had loved one man without a heart,

One man without a brain.

Love without complaint.

The fault was surely his that they were no more.

He squeezed his eyes shut, so, so tight. Stars came through.

The fire swirled and sparked.

Without Ambrose around, filling the void with the rasp in his voice,

Glitch could hear it:

The noise,

The buzzing,

A million angry bees locked inside the backlogs of his memory.

It had been quiet for ages.

It was the reason that he talked so much. He believed this as it occurred to him.

Loquacity, garrulity, grammatolatry, verbolatry:

The requiescat items hummed over the adverbial grave.

XIII. Moxie

By the slant of the suns, the hour of the day according to his watch, Ambrose knew it was spring. They were so far north by then that it seemed like winter. Endless grey dominated the sky. It moved itself, liquid smoke, but not pellucid—

solid in form, solid in intention.

Ambrose wore one coat. Glitch still wore two. At night, wherever they stopped, a fire kept them warm, one blanket between them. Hours of stagnation. No conversation. No hate. No love.

Ambrose turned against the defects in Glitch. Weak, simple, indirect, passive. He flung these words, spear after spear, hoping to ignite the heart and ignore the wound. And when Glitch cried, Ambrose saw it and cheered. "I did this," he said to himself. "I did this." The power he felt was monumental. It takes a scholar to kick a gentleman when he's down. And it takes a madman to know the absence of moxie, the indignation in a frown.

He didn't know, just yet, that contempt builds a hollow.

From it, revenge would leap,

Formless, shapeless, secretive, provocative.

Solid in form. Solid in intention.

Like the lonely cloud lost above the lonely world.

Not forgotten, but not looked for.

When found, discounted.

XIV. Market, Myth, Kooky, Cards

Wilderness wound its will into an inconsequential village. Nothing surrounded, then, at once, trees cleared, grass shortened, lawns fanned behind fine fences, with flagstone paths up to find homes. It was market day, everyone crowding the lanes for goods, for selling, for pick-pocketing. Those with sticky hands strode round Ambrose. He stalked tall, proud, foreboding, in his dark red long coat, his silent growl. Glitch reminisced, later, that Ambrose had the sort of eyes that spawns of mythical demons held, beyond the definition of gelid, of frigid.

They bought strange bread, flat but full of taste, a sweetness, like cream and butter, at the back of it. They bought wine, homemade, from dandelions and clover, so it was both insipid and syrupy. From the merchants, Ambrose asked after the myth. Not the beasts who held his eyes, but of the bone path spoken of, weeks ago by then, the man in threadbare galligaskins.

"Don't know no bone path," arrived and died on the pale faces of gaunt merchant men. "Is it a witch you're looking for? We have a witch. Mother Kooky, she goes by. No one knows her real name. And, after a while, names are misplaced and replaced. Easy things to fix."

Then, this man who sold them tarts, sold them to the tarot harridan. Her booth was wrapped in thin sheaves of scarves, not made but unmade, filled with beads and baubles at the holes she'd pulled, thread by thread. Glitch wanted to play, take one into the sunbeams and watch it trick the light, make the colours waltz across the faces of passers-by, but it was his turn to keep still, silent, away.

She was batrachian, in all the classical sense: warts in tandem along her jaw, wide, belligerent eyes, stained yellow and brown, the bottom of a brook in daylight. She took their coins, and referred to one man as two. She knew the shadow behind the one. Some shadows breathed, had a life of their own. Stormed off when angry, left you when you were sad, returned to rejoice with you, shed tears with you or mocked you for them. All shadows potentially breathed, but only a few of them lifted their masks and inhaled.

She squatted to her stool, her scarves flowing in a wind indifferent and cool. She had him touch the cards, break them into three piles, and counted them off as he did. "Once, twice, thrice… Ah, The Fool." She had turned over the first card. It lay before them. A man in tatters of hose and stained jerkin. Upside down, by his toes.

Glitch winced, thinking of toes.

The bones in them.

The bone path.

The bone.

The path.

The harridan laughed, and when her laugh faded, it resorted to its natural cackle. Ambrose saw her white mane turn black, her warty nose turn to a beak, and feathers sooty and smooth, black and blue, sprout across her.

"You're fools who will own the world, if you find the right path," she told them, before flying off. She folded up her scarves, her sticks, into one suitcase. Feathers moulted from her back. A trail of black was left behind.

They set on again.

Pathless, wordless.

Alone in a warming wind.

Sometimes, a crow followed them.

XV. Proximity, Redolent

Glitch's mind seemed to revolve the quickest at night.

He was forced to lie still. But he wanted to jump, climb trees, go, go, go, and never stop going, not even if he found Wyatt and DG, and they said "When!"

"Quit moving."

"I'm sorry. There's a rock in my thigh. I'm uncomfortable."

The answer to discomfort, if Ambrose's mood was amiable, and then it was,

Had Glitch in his arms, tugging his back to his chest. Fear paralysed Glitch. This wasn't what he wanted. This was the wrong proximity. Ambrose was too close. He could feel breath moving the strands of his hair.

But DG used to be there.

And if she was gone, Wyatt.

Wyatt, snuffling in his sleep,

With great, big breaths, deep and meaningful, the life in him.

None of that, now.

Ambrose's groans sounded beneath the hum of the blooming trees, as he ground his pleasure into Glitch. Hands moved in wayward directions, to moisten distant places.

"If you touch me," Glitch warned him, "I will kill you."

"Aren't you going to kill me anyway? What's a little harmless sex between friends? You loved me, once."

"I love only the sane."

"Then you love me."

"But I don't."

"If you didn't, a little bit, you wouldn't be here. Quit—" Ambrose moved to stifle Glitch, over him, a hand at his shoulder, knees pinning him at the legs, "moving!" He threw a palm against Glitch's trousers, expecting to feel hardness, but knowing only limpness. "You always were rotten at this."

Why was Ambrose so much stronger? They were twins. The same face, body, hair, eyes, everything—only the souls knew disparity, uniqueness. He wriggled to free himself. But Ambrose was too right, far too often: He was terrible at this.

"If you touch me," Glitch knew he would repeat himself, forever, as long as he could stand to hear the plea in his own voice, "I will kill you." And the danger in it.

"Fine," Ambrose agreed, saucily leaning back.

Glitch stayed still, pressured by one hand, while the other undid a buckle, some buttons, until looking at a penis, pale and pink in the firelight.

"I won't touch you," said Ambrose.

He grabbed Glitch's burned wrist. A piece of torture behind a bandage.

"So you'll have to touch me."

The smell of blood, from the murder of the owl hunter, long ago removed from Ambrose's hands, remained redolent, brilliant, stark in the intrusive odours of night. It replaced everything, his madness, and left the sting of dissent behind.

XVI. Fabulist, Paint

Glitch slept and saw the broken bones they were chasing.

Floating down in a stream of black, turning to haze at the end. He tipped over, to fall in after them. They needed the bones. Everyone needed bones, or they would ooze about, invertebrates, with their homes on their backs and their appetite for mossy old wood. And no tongues, and no speech. Just words printed in ooze and ripped across the ground with pine needles.

He fell, one passage after another as opaque ebony circles round and round him. "They've inverted the night sky," he thought, and was terrified. "Why can't they turn it back? What will happen if they don't turn it back?" He witnessed eclipses of moons and suns, of days long ago when the ancients thought the suns would die, or that there'd be only one.

He knew what might be waiting for him, at the end of his stumble.

One face, one name; his being, his life, his breath—his heart, his wedding ring.

"Wyatt!"

The invisible ground in his vision smacked him into reality. Alone, again, without Ambrose to loiter, to asperse.

His wrist ached. He unwound the bandages, kept them in a pile on his lap. While he found a pen knife, the owl hunter's, hidden in the back pocket of Ambrose's knapsack.

"What are you doing?" the thin nothing, the mask behind, asked him. His own, but his conscience, the accent that vibrated the strings of a marionette. "You don't want to do this."

He hovered the blade above the burn. The flames flickered in the fire pit, urging him to do it. Cut off the dead skin. Cut off the scars. You'll understand why when it's over, done—

Do it. For us, for the yearning we have to help you.

But DG and Wyatt were dead. He remembered that.

"Who is to say what you remember, Glitch?"

"I remember that tomorrow's Tuesday. I remember the merry month of May. I remember DG's birthday, Wyatt's favourite socks, Raw's laugh, Meria's recipe for cherry frosting on warm white cake." He swallowed, the blade kissing his flesh. "I remember their deaths."

The pinguid blade sank deliciously into his skin, and ripped off such a large portion of the scar. The eschar fled. The hooded actuary shushed. The fabulist in him remained. Fake red paint pattered to leaves and dirt.

Glitch lifted and angled the knife for one more scarification.

Then, across the meadow, in a field full of silvery moonlight, indulgent shadows, came a howl of despair.

He thought of Chimtu, his wolf-dog.

Living a solitary, feral existence on the face of a faraway mountain.

Two friends gone; one missing.

The knife fell.

He fell, curled on his bedroll, not caring if he died as he lay.

He cried with passion that rivalled the wolf's despair.


	3. Chapter 3

XVII. Ginger, Point

Glitch woke on a June morning, aware that it was June.

The smells of summer hung in the fields. He'd slept in a hut, on the floor. Kittens and cats surrounded him, purring his direction, winking as they passed through patches of sunlight. He gave all of them names by the time grogginess left him, and he was out the door.

The absolute stillness nearly broke him.

Ambrose wasn't near.

Glitch cheered at the thought, what he could grasp of it,

But warnings plagued and shrouded victory.

Ambrose would be back. The scar on his wrist burned, a harsh, inwardly-shaped ache. Meditative on the silence, the absence of Ambrose. Still, a caveat: Ambrose would return.

Showers had pattered from sky to ground beneath the indifferent eyes of stars.

The dampness clung to the morning. He hated to do walk across the large purple clover

And disturb, disrupt, wipe away the dewy drops stationary on corpulent emerald leaves.

He lolled about the edges of the field. A white kitten followed him, briskly at first, then letting him go his own way, farther than hers. On a branch somewhere, a crow threw out its caw to the forest.

Withdrawn from the clover, Glitch's nose hastened to catch an unusual scent. Ginger, somewhere, in root or in a kitchen. He did, like the white kitten had him, follow it.

Smells that are pleasing require greater concentration to seek than those that smell foul.

He lost it for a while, picked it up again.

He let it go for a while, afraid to find Ambrose at the start of it.

He was forced to stall at a tall stump, taken to pieces by the progression of natural things.

A glint of metallic rested at its top, something potentially the size of his hand,

Bigger than a tin star, duller than silver.

Cold, it turned out, in his fingers, as it slumbered in the silhouettes of neighbours.

A box, already cut into quarters. He unfolded it. At its heart was no heart at all, and no star, and nothing magical or malignant.

It was a compass, old and broken from abandonment. The needle had broken off, down to the pin, but its stump struggled to magnetically twist. But it no longer pointed north.

Glitch put it in his pocket. Such a thing without meaning had his sympathies. It was no longer fit for what it had been created for.

He struggled on, through a fen filled with draggled weeds and sprouting reeds.

In its middle, an island, but no way to the shore.

Yet he sensed, his hunger telling him so, it held the ginger source.

He frowned, pleased to have it unseen, only felt.

What would ginger have told him about the path of bones?

A crow cackled anew.

"Only the crow knows."

XVIII. Jingle, Inexplicable

Tomorrow came, and he didn't know how. He'd watched the sky for changes in it: dawn to dusk and all. But it went without his notice. Summer seemed to wane, too. His boots shuffled through slush. Snow hindered his gait.

"How far north have I come?" he asked of the compass. It said nothing back. He began to miss Ambrose. Inanimate objects keep secrets too well for friendliness.

A town found him, and he didn't know how. He blinked: it was there. Like magic parting the fog, the grey, the mist, the doom, and leaving him with this little place of quaintness.

"DG would've liked this."

He had some money, a few platinums jingling in his pocket. The general store tantalised him. The clerk-lady was friendly, amiable, her blue eyes kind against his whimsical hesitancies.

He found out he was on the back side of the Mountain.

He'd somehow returned to Issilthrush without his knowing how.

"But the wrong side of it," he said to himself, comfortingly, just to peel away the panic that they'd find him now. "Home is on the other side."

He asked after the path of bones. She shook her head, kindness gone. Immediate sadness, inexplicably, beyond the reach of him. He laughed and shook his head. Only kidding, kidding.

But he bought a map,

A journal,

A little fountain pen,

With the last jingling of coins.

He was out of money, and filled with a terrible sensation of his having made too many wrong turns, before the departure, before agreeing to do this.

He bought the journal thinking that line after line of his adventure would be penned, to cease his repeating visits to towns he'd already seen. And partly, too, for the sake of narration—

For Wyatt and DG.

At night, by the fire lit with flint and dried fronds, he realised his folly.

Overwhelmed by it, he sat on the journal, bit on the end of the pen.

Living men do not write tales for the pleasure of the dead.

XIX. Ash, Bohemian, Border

The need for food caused him to wander far from his camp. He'd been there days, on the sunny southern end of the mountain. Berries grew in golden fields. Nuts grew in the forest. He shared with the squirrels and cavarks, the skunks and the massatouey. He existed harmoniously. Ambrose seemed distorted, fragmented, lost in the rough winds high on the top of Issilthrush, and buried under snows that never melted, confined in blocks of ice never touched by suns.

The ash in the dormant fire had been shifted through. Hands in earnest, on the hunt. Glitch wrestled with his imaginations. Bohemians, maybe; they ran wild and uncivilised in unknown portions of the wood…

No, what would wanderers and minstrels want with his fireplace ash? He checked the stash of nuts hidden in an abandoned den beneath a borsmir tree: safe. He added to it, dropping in three, curious, alarmed, annoyed. Who would shift through his ash for something? Was anything missing? Had Ambrose come—?

"Oh, no."

All at once, he recalled the poignant motions Wyatt had done once. On their way to visit DG, they'd come upon a campsite, vacant, with no border of logs or stones. He shifted through the ash to find hot coals.

"If there are any, we'll know someone was here this morning," said Wyatt. "If it's all cold, we'll know we can stay here tonight, and not expect visitors."

Wyatt had turned over each black ember. Cold, cold—all of them cold.

A formidable chill hypnotised Glitch.

He shuffled back to his own little pile of ash, and found, through squinting and calculation, the makings of a handprint.

He laid his palm over it, spreading his fingers to match the pinkie and ring fingers.

The palm was fatter and wider than his, but his fingers were longer, tip for tip.

"Wyatt…"

He played with his lip, soot on his skin, fear invading his mind.

He wished he hadn't done this. How was he supposed to succeed? Ghosts followed him, his evil lover hounded him—and he could no longer trust his own mind to decipher real from fantasy.

He was real.

Everything else wasn't.

"I'm not dead. They are."

Glitch knew how sorry they would be to hear that.

XX. Weather, City

The weather was uncomfortably close and warm the day Ambrose returned. Glitch had moved as far south as he could, taking the long way round, following the river, avoiding the tight circumferences of the city. He rarely considered himself lost. Misplaced, from minute to minute, or from one week to the next, but never was he lost. Geniuses are not apt to be lost.

"Are you needing help finding your way?" a man with a mule and wagon asked him, a passer-by who looked forlorn and full of concern.

"No, no…" Again, he set his fingertips to his lip. He still tasted ash and bits of ginger, as though they were clues to the bones, the spell, or carrying hints of it. "No, I'm all right."

He regarded the man with the mule and wagon—and the stranger had transformed into Ambrose.

Glitch stepped backwards, toe to toe. He recalled the blood of the owl hunter, all over his hands, everywhere, until the earth reddened with it. No longer were sunsets as pleasurable; gone was the taste for viewing anything bright and crimson and saturated with the murderous deed.

He inhaled sharply, pivoted, and ran.

He must run,

And he must outrun,

To survive to find what he missed.

XXI. Leave, Spy

A bog deadened his race against torture. The sludge held his boot too tightly: he became flattened in the black watery peat. Bullfrogs guffawed, and birds cackled.

"Well done," cried Ambrose. "Oh splendidly done, Glitch! Your grace is as definitively yours as ever it was. Get up…" This was given, at least, in the spirit of gentleness. He smacked Glitch on the head. "GET UP!" Indignation rose, and as Glitch's face appeared, slatted by muddy streaks, Ambrose slapped him hard across the cheek.

It was stifling hot. Glitch felt his tears drying in the suns along with the mud. He was too weary and disheartened to sob. No reward would come of it, as his wishing had brought naught but all he hadn't wished for.

Glitch swooped a leg out to hook behind Ambrose. Then _he_ was coated in black peat, miserable, whining. Glitch shoved his crossed arms over the back of Ambrose's neck, pinning him to the gunk with the force of his hatred and fright.

"Leave me alone! Leave me ALONE! LEAVE ME ALONE!"

"You coward!" Ambrose swiped and swatted, till they were on their feet.

Tempers roiled in the heat. Flies and bees, dragonflies and moths, flitted and buzzed as they pleased around their ankles, hovering over the peat.

"Coward," repeated Ambrose.

"Only cowards murder innocent people! Leave me alone! I don't need you any more! I'm going to find that spell myself!"

"The spell—the great a glorious spell that's going to save you? That spell? It doesn't exist. Like your—" his gestures were exaggerated "your great and glorious path of bones, your invisible witches and talking stones! I should like to see you succeed without me, you enfeebled slug with the mind and attention span of a gnat!"

Ambrose knew what he had done, and congratulated himself.

"You don't need to find the spell," Ambrose told his unconscious self. "I won't let you get rid of me, Glitch—not yet, not yet. Think of the things you and I could do! Win back our place in society! Spy again on the doings of others, practice in some blackmail, like we'd planned in the days before the Eclipse."

"I don't want to. I don't want it—any of it. I want to go home, Ambrose, home. I want Wyatt and-and DG. I want love and forgiveness and happiness and joy. You can't give that to me."

"But you could have power—power, Glitch! If you had let Wyatt marry DG like you were supposed to, like we'd planned, instead of being so selfish and taking him for yourself."

"You don't know what you're talking about. That's my family!"

"You don't know what _you're_ talking about! Family! You don't need a family—just me! That's why they're dead!"

"They are _not_ dead! Nothing can be dead that I believe in, that's so beautiful to me."

Ambrose licked his lips and hastened on. The raison d'être poised on his tongue, bent like a blade to confuse Glitch. "I can make you powerful and rich—and you could have anyone you wanted. Queens and kings, rather than moody courtiers and emotionless princesses! Let me handle us, Glitch, let me—"

Glitch lunged at him, hands reaching for Ambrose's neck. He gurgled but freed himself. Glitch's defences collapsed.

With one shove from Ambrose, Glitch was taken down, his threatening presence revoked. His forehead met with a rock, softened a little by mud.

XXII. Holiday, Singing, Connection

An awareness of his life bounced in and around Glitch,

Coming on like winter did, in flashes of pale, forgotten forests,

In patches of autumnal mist freezing on a hill,

The black shadowy coves of inland pits.

Something about winter and songs stirred him from pain to reverie.

He hadn't forgotten the forest, but he'd taken another route,

One undetermined.

What he forgot was the roads he'd seen, where he meant to be,

The swiftness shifting through his fingers, his hair,

Leaving him here and there, far from home,

Leaving him to hibernate in the atrocity between life and death.

In his mind then were tiny little tokens left behind by DG and Wyatt.

How could he do it?

How could he?

He could. The how no longer carried him to the depths of agony.

He was not Ambrose. But he should've been more careful.

The connection didn't come for a long while yet, as he nestled himself in the safety of waves,

Undue consciousness,

In and out, twirls and bubbles, breathing shallow and cool against the hot interior of him.

He felt the song's reverberation,

The notes dropping, singularly, into lyrics thrummed into life by a weary, breathy voice.

The singing woman, like the owl hunter, dressed in black feathers and willing to find them,

For the sake of discovering the illusory in the world, the world drawn backwards from its inside, and thrown out again, torched and torn.

His eyelids lifted, and he saw clouds of butterflies peeling back the filmy fluff, exposing the blue. Beating their wings so harshly that the wind blew from the force of them. They were mottled, orange and yellow and black and white. More than that. A thousand colours he was so incapable of perceiving. But an augur could see more. A woman of magic. A princess removed from hope from the throne, but taking to the realm, her love for it her only home.

She travelled, enjoyed long holidays, in the company of him. Then Wyatt was nearly lost,

Lost in a haunted orchard near his home,

Almost taken from them,

Until they recovered him with love,

Until they sang love into his heart, into theirs,

The three of them never to be split apart.

"DG?" he called, expecting the gods to now laugh at him.

But her scent was in the air, magnified by butterflies.

Wherever she tread, a garden grew. Butterflies and birds followed her,

Attracted to the light within.

"Wyatt?"

But his presence leaded the air, and stalled the clouds,

Kept winter away and storms from being too ornery, too proud.

So much power from him, that no one could but yield

If Wyatt demanded it.

Glitch focused, recovered, touching his head.

The zipper was gone, but the remedy of its hex never left.

The dreamer wasn't recovered, but swept away,

Spiralling from the pressure of DG's perfume,

From the heat of Wyatt's intensity.

All he wanted was to wake up with them.

Not to be alone.

Not to be dead just yet.

XXIII. Under, Botany, Rust

DG had her feet flying beneath her, from the village to the edge of the forest.

In the woods, she slowed to watch her steps, over protrusions of root,

Under canopies of leafy branches. It smelled of unfinished things, remembered hopes that thawed in spring, freshly made in winter. She loved pine and leaves, smoke from chimneys,

Babbling brooks and mosquito fish. She held the heart of nature.

In her hand, she held a lunch pail with a rusty bottom and a checked rag hanging over its lip. Her hat was pushed back into place, low on her brow, to hide the apricot sunset suns

Flashing generously through the tall, thin ever-reaching trees. A field of pink trilliums dotted a clearing not far from her. She wanted to stop, stare, share it with someone. But Wyatt would laugh and hold her, till he kissed her somewhere for being so dear, such a wonder. What did he care for botany if it wasn't in their garden?

DG ran on, catching up to hope. He wasn't far. He hadn't gotten far. All over the map he'd gone, ever a tragic catch.

But they'd found him,

Found him,

At last.


	4. Chapter 4

XXIV. Sink, Galloon

Glitch woke and thought he'd died. He touched his heart, it was somewhere near where he laid his hand, and felt for it. One. Steady. Rhythm. All his own.

Wyatt was now part of it.

"You—you're—"

But no more words forced their way from him. He was up, pressing forward, removing his hand from his heart to test the warmth of Wyatt's neck. It was hot, the power of solar warmth, with the promise of blood behind it. In case it was a dream, Glitch leaned in, mouth poised over Wyatt's lips. Breath landed on his cheek. A mouth landed on his. He wanted to glide, shift, fade: he wanted to sink into Wyatt kiss by kiss.

"You're not dead," he finally revealed the source of confusion. His bewilderment brought a tighter cling to Wyatt, caresses across a bristled chin, tugs of cloth lapel and shirt collar. "You're not dead."

"Glitch," Wyatt's stern voice was roughened by the lust in him, "listen for a second… Do you know what's happened?"

"To me?" He pointed to himself, gleeful and giddy. Then it evanished amid a rainfall of dismal doubt. "To you? To DG?"

"DG's fine. Like I am. She's here with— She'll be back. She went into the village for some food for you. We think it might've been days since you've eaten."

"Not days, I—"

All at once afraid of where he'd been, how he could've been so mistaken, Glitch clung to Wyatt. His ear pressed against the chest, the breathing within mixing across the curls atop his head. The life in him, undeniable, beautiful. He could stay forever, listening.

"What happened?"

"I'll tell you when DG gets here. You must've had some kind of trip, Glitch. We've been tracking you for months."

But he vowed no more, only holding, clinging, pressing. When the earth shuddered from the sound of feet, Glitch rose, Wyatt with him. Out of the parting of trees, DG emerged. Glitch engulfed great sobs of joy at the beauty of her. She laughed and leapt into a hug. They waltzed, fell, rolled on the ground, careless as cats playful in the noonday sun. Wyatt took up the lunch pail and rooted through it, glancing at his loved ones when he heard DG giggle for the first time since Glitch had gone. Love freed them, imprisoned them, then liberated them once more. He remembered his life before them, despised what he'd been, and knew how they had saved him. The cost of his retribution pained him still. Every love, he knew, had an overlay of deceit somewhere. DG couldn't be theirs forever. It was always a lie she told, one he never believed.

Glitch purred and smiled, folding his hands into DG's hair. Her body moulded to his as though she hadn't been gone from it. He wrapped his legs round hers, kissed her with all his feeling. "Precious, lovely you, what have I been doing without you? Where've you been? How did I think you were dead?"

"Ambrose," DG whispered. She scurried to her feet and, for comfort against the implications of his nefarious name, hid behind Wyatt.

Glitch stared at him, resolved to have the answers, if he had to be still, if he had to clutch the intangible, beady, slippery ends of them. "What did I do? How did I let Ambrose control me?"

"You got this idea in your head, Glitch," Wyatt started. It was voted by the two of them that he would lead this discussion. The language was difficult to sort through, what words to use, what words might be damaging or cursed.

"Right," he nodded. Thoughts that were once his own, spoken again—they were easy to follow, like a road through a glen. "Right. The breaking spell. Oh—did I tell you? Or did— Did I tell you? I found out from some hag who turned into a crow—or, wait, no— It was some old man in galligaskins. Miles back, in a village by some trees. Well, that could be anywhere, couldn't it? He said that we would find the witch if we found the path of bones. Path of bones, Wyatt!"

Glitch shook Wyatt until his words glistened in exuberance.

"Path of bones! Do you hear me? Not sweet, sweet paths lines with rose bushes or tomato plants, or found by climbing old stone walls covered in brambles, like in old fairy stories. Just a path of bones…" His fingers hovered over his bottom lip, where DG had left his kiss, as he drifted further into significant contemplation. "I thought I'd found it, the path of bones, when we met the owl-man."

The realisation thundered, clashed, bore Glitch away in a hurricane of guilt, remorse, anguish. The doom he caused reared, surfaced, and led him, staggering, into a willow. DG and Wyatt rushed to catch him. Grateful as he was to have them to lean into, comforted by their warmth, he couldn't let them love him without telling them first.

"Wyatt… You know what it's like… DG wouldn't. Angels mustn't get their wings soiled… But you know." He clung with strength in his fisted hands to Wyatt's shirt, looking up into the face that loved him. "You know what it's like—when you just have to kill a man."

He fainted clean away. Wyatt fetched DG's look with an unequivocal stare.

"Kill a man?"

DG's chin shook, tears coming as diamonds into her eyes. "It must've been Ambrose, if it happened at all. Ambrose," she gulped, gazing upon Glitch, "Ambrose could kill a man. Wyatt… Wyatt, we have to do something. Path of bones, what is that? We should get back to the village, get a room. We should telegram Chessa, at least, and let her know we found him. I should tell Az…"

She knelt with Wyatt next to Glitch, held his other hand. Glitch between them received her sympathy, simple as it was, as it had always been. Her instantaneous laugh turned into a sob.

"It was supposed to be easy. He was looking forward to it… Finding out what the spell was, all just to fix him."

"I know. What he's been through, I'm not sure, DG. I'm not sure he can really come back. Spell or no spell." He reached across Glitch, the golden galloons on his coat worn thin with weather and age, stole DG's hand and pressed. "We'll take him to the village when he wakes up."

XXV. Truculence, Life

The village was named Camden, by a creek that fed a series of flourishing flour mills. Among such hard-working denizens, all of them that summer shuffling about in a constant cloud of unsettled dust, it was not unusual, as Wyatt discovered, to arrive at the local inn with an unconscious man over his shoulder.

"Room for three then, yeah?" asked the innkeeper, taking a look at the arriving trio, summarising and finalising the story of their lives. They come and go, like all the rest. Destined to pass through, never destined to stay. A man, his man, and maybe one of the man's daughter. The innkeeper wasn't too sure. A key was slapped on the counter, and the registry book signed. Wyatt Cain, of the Issilthrush principality. "Long way from home."

"Well," he bobbed his head to indicate his burden, "he was a whole lot farther, that's all."

DG found their room, in the back corner, away from the bustle of the road, with trees by the window and an empty field beyond. She threw open the windows, then helped Wyatt lay Glitch on the bed. He roused then, touching his forehead, grunting softly, turning on his side.

"Now where am I?" One reluctant eye peeked open. When the other came up, there was truculence, and he flung himself about, answers demanded. "Did I have too much to drink? Oh—oh, I told you." He filled with plea, the song of it resounding. "I told you about—about the dead man."

"Glitch," DG tucked her knees beneath her, taking his hand. "You're sure Ambrose killed somebody?"

"I saw it." He reclaimed his fingers from her. She shouldn't touch him. He was damaged. That was something she had to know. "I saw him die. I checked to be sure. Only, the red on my hands… Seas of red, and feathers—feathers of red." He looked at his palms, pink and white, flat and thin, white at the plateaus, with veins blue through them. The accuracy of his story was doubted. They went on, disbelieving; he went on believing, as he did in the path of bones, in the existence of a witch who would help him.

"I can show you."

So vehement was the declaration that DG and Wyatt refrained from responding.

"Look, I'm serious! If you have a map, I can tell you where we were! I had a map, once. I even had a compass—for a little while. But it was broken and Ambrose threw it into a fen somewhere in Lorraggabu. That was the end of it. I don't remember the map. There was a tarot-reader who turned into a crow. She follows me sometimes, on the sly. She's always sly. Witches have to be, I suppose. But she didn't tell me what I wanted to know. She didn't tell Ambrose, either. Nothing, not a thing, not a word, a breath, a syllable, about the path of bones. She said we were fools. Fools." He played with the word inside his mind, recalling the image on the card, the man hanging by his toes over nothing, nothing, nothing at all. "Fools who would own the world if we walked the right path. Never mind, never mind… I'm tired of it. If you don't think Ambrose killed a man, then you know that I didn't kill a man. How could I? Ambrose… I hated him. He terrified me, tortured me. Look, look! I'm serious…"

He lifted the sleeve of his coat and showed them the scar, long and jagged over the plain of his wrist bone.

"He did this. Every bit of it. I know this is a stupid question."

Glitch paused. The shock had yet to abate for them. Too much, all at once, sending them floating from him horror by horror.

A frigid DG moved a little in the icy water. Like a black pool with stars floating in it. Ambrose did that to her, brought about this painted image, so sticky it worked through her like taffy, molasses, until she was stuck with it.

"What question?" she finally asked. Wyatt was too pale for queries. From the old wound of Glitch's, Wyatt hadn't lifted his eyes. It haunted and hurt. They wanted the spell, or they would be forced to forfeit him.

"But you—" He glanced rapidly between them. Their faces were as sweet and beckoning as always. Something foreign lingered in the dark dots of their irises, where the light reflected and the pupil swallowed it. Something foreign, husky, obscured, fuscous. "You haven't seen him, have you? Ambrose. I think he's gone. I want to be sure."

He responded to Wyatt's fingertips on the bump of his wrist. "He's gone, Glitch."

"Oh… Oh, all right, then. We still need the spell, don't we? I mean, I still want the spell." The something foreign in their eyes caught in his throat. He didn't want them to look at him like that for all the days he had left. He choked on the pain, the fear, the anxiety. "I just want myself back. I want my life back. The spell's the only thing that will fix me."

DG comforted him, Wyatt kissing his brow and massaging his shoulder volunteered to see about food, find a map, and send a telegram to his niece. Chessa, he knew, would be worried to tears over this.

"It'll be all right, Glitch." DG lay beside him, stretched beside him, her head pressed to his chest, her arm over him. "We travelled through all weathers and all seasons to find you. When we heard you hadn't arrived in Central City, we panicked. Mother called, and Azkadellia called. They were paranoid something had happened to you then. And with Azkadellia's vicious run of suitors flitting about the palace in town, they were all the more concerned. Of course, once we realised that there was a limited trace of you, that you'd seemed to wander immediately from your course, well, suitors were forgotten."

He kept repeating in his head "Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods…" And asking what he had done. What had he done?

"Did I ruin Azkadellia's chance at matrimonial bliss?" He tried to laugh at it. The thought, the thought… Azkadellia, she was just a puppy, really, dressed in funny furbelows and sent out to do tricks and gimmicks for a crown and a ring.

"I don't think so. I think it was pretty tainted before you were involved, Glitch." She pressed lips to a spot along his jaw, one she'd missed. "Are you feeling all right?"

"All right? I should say I do! I'm with you and Wyatt now. What can possibly go wrong? And we'll find out that the owl-man wasn't real, that he didn't kill a man; we'll find the path of bones that will lead us to the witch. I know we will. And I'll belong to you two again. Things will be as they should be. Our lives will resume. There." He cuffed her wrists in his hands, plunking kisses wherever they happened to fall. "Is that ridiculously optimistic enough for you?"

"Ridiculously."

He saw the foreign spark emit its foreign energy again.

Some transference. An inference unspoken.

It frightened.

Wyatt, DG thought.

Wyatt will have to tell him.

XXVI. Street

Glitch recognised places on the map that Wyatt brought. Food was there, too, but food was ignored, for a long while, in favour of the map. The names of streets, towns, forests, cemeteries, all were absorbed rapidly. His eyes beamed upon the printed paper. A weightless thing, practically, but holding invaluable release: the exoneration of Ambrose's crime.

Emphatically, he pointed to one splotch. A wooded area between towns one and two, by cliffs and a thin brook that burgeoned out to a river down south.

"This is where the owl-man was. The owl hunter, he called himself that. I remember it very well. Did you send a telegram to Chessa?"

Wyatt nodded, assuring him that it'd been done. "Said you were fine. Said we didn't know when we'd be back." Wyatt tugged gently to rid Glitch of the map. "Eat something, would you? I want to speak to DG for a minute, so I'll take her outside."

"Can't you say it in front of me?"

"It's about—it's about—" He was whelmed by the amount of silence between them. For months, he'd been with DG only. Actions happened that neither of them escaped. "Glitch, I don't know…"

Glitch straightened his shoulders. The sandwich in his mouth removed before the bite was taken. "What? What? Is someone hurt, sick, gone, dead? Someone's always dying. It's the way of things."

"Glitch," DG trampled over his words, remembering them from a long while ago. The way of things… Certainly, this was not the way of things. Harsh and cruel and fixated on damaging her from core to skin. "Glitch, um…"

Wyatt felt her glance, met it, encouraged her with a touch at the elbow. It was enough. She wanted him to say, but realised it wasn't his place.

She was shaking her head, mimicking an outlandish outcry to the words, done in pantomime. "They want Azkadellia to get married, fast. They're bringing in suitors—and—and if they're rejected, or if she—if they don't want her—they're passed to me."

His expression contorted into confusion, torment, bitterness. DG threw her palms over her eyes. Crying answered nothing, but responded to the ache within.

"They want me to get married, me! This is exactly what I wanted to avoid, all of it! I've run from suitors before, and I can do it again."

For a long while, Glitch went still, the sandwich in his lap turning stale. Then he reached, reeled her in. She toppled over when her knees met with the mattress. Sandwich, map, canvas bag, crunched, crinkled, beneath her. There was no laugh, just a smile, timid with serenity.

"You can't run forever, kitten," said Glitch. "Find a nice one, willing to accept your unusual lifestyle commitment. I don't really think…" How could he talk like this? A week ago, he was mad—madder than he'd ever been. He'd seen the depth of Ambrose's darkness and walked in its trail, its berth ever widening to create havoc from within, facilitate the rise of hatred, and leave it to swallow him. "I don't really think you're likely to fall in love with any of them. What's this have to do with Chessa? Oh, I only ask because the subject of the telegram Wyatt sent to Chessa brought us into this subject. The two must be connected. How?"

"Chessa's going to meet us at the palace in Central City," Wyatt confirmed. Glitch was like that, impossible to discern, at first, his mind too brilliant, not vertical, not an inch of him encompassing the lateral logic of boring genius. Everything in him was extraordinary. "And we'll be there… as soon as we've confirmed that the owl-hunter wasn't real."

"I had blood on my hands," Glitch argued, tone holding the truth of what he saw, what he'd touched.

The cold, he frequently remembered the cold.

"Glitch."

Wyatt held him enraptured by his voice. How pleasant it sounded, how it smoothly resounded in every crease outside and within him. He slipped his hand over Wyatt's knee, comforted by the nearness. He no longer feared wandering alone come the loss of suns, the rise of moons. The stars blinded his sense of reality, turning the opaque translucent. Objects faded at the edges. But not Wyatt. Not DG.

"Glitch, you've been sick." Wyatt leaned in, kissed his spouse on the forehead, between grey and black twisted locks. He smelled of brambles, mud, willow trees. "You might've dreamed it all. We don't know yet."

"That's why I need the spell." Glitch reassessed himself. How sick he was! He'd almost forgotten. The reunion was too much, too much… It had overtaken his senses. Daintily, as if issuing that he remembered his illness and went about treating it, he reclaimed the sandwich, compacted now, bruised a little, and began to eat.

He wanted to leave in a while.

"How soon can we be there?"

Wyatt raised his gaze from the map. The back of his neck received a brief massage from his hand. "I don't know… A few days… We can rent some horses. Can you ride?"

"Sure," Glitch said peremptorily. "I've an ass, haven't I? That's all one needs to ride. Don't need to be in your right mind, really. Just need an ass."

XXVII. Frame, Unexpurgated

The spot where death had been looked as vacated as the horizon.

He'd left it like this, and scurried into the underbrush when tears had been shed. "But he was here." Glitch averred it, repeatedly, as best he could, to make his friends understand that a spirit had been stolen right where he stood.

Only bracken and soft-grass, blooming bright-eyed blue at its ends, sprouted.

To hide the end result of knife and bloodshed.

Not a bone,

Not a toe,

Not a finger,

Not a feather,

Not a tooth.

Nothing, nothing. Only bracken and soft-grass.

"He was here. It's a fact," Glitch glanced equally between Wyatt and DG, "it's a fact, not a lie. I can't—I can't lie about something like that."

"It's all right, Glitch." DG held his shoulder, wanting to comfort him, but beheld her inability to do so. His capriciousness tended to comfort first. "Look, there's no body, so there's no crime. What say you to that, Marshal Cain? You do this sort of stuff for a living."

He eyed her pensively. Conclusions on the scene were reached before she suggested he examine it critically. "If it happened when Glitch says it did—"

"It did."

"Then it happened too long ago for evidence to linger. I think we should go to the nearest village, talk to some of the people there, and find out if they knew this owl-man."

On the red brick road to the village of Turrstine, they passed a woman, short, round, in rags, who looked like a dead blossom clinging to a once verdant vine. She glowed, with rich phosphorescence. The timid like show formulated a memory of Ambrose's into his.

"The molten woman." His haggard whisper stopped him, stopped her, and yanked in Wyatt and DG.

"Ah, ah," the molten woman gave her insights like laughs, "it's you, is it? Lost your shadow again, Peter Pan? Ah, oh, I see you found your proper replacements."

Glitch ignored every syllable, and introductions failed to faze him. "Do you know the owl-man? The owl hunter? He used to wander these woods… What are you doing?"

She stooped, lowered, with the help of her crooked, knurled walking stick, to the ground. Out of a canvas satchel at her hip, she brought out the tarot cards, and, taking one from some random place in the stack, laid three out.

"Do you need this to tell me if you know the owl hunter? Seems superfluous."

"It is my way," Mother Kooky told him. She had the World, Strength, and the Empress. All were crossed by the Ace of Wands. "You should journey home, lad. Forget about the owl hunter, if he existed."

DG saw the old woman hide the cards. "What do you mean by that?"

"What do I mean by that? Trickery in my words, dearie? You could suss it out, you could, you could." Mother Kooky bobbed her head, her troll-like frame moving awkwardly along the road. Draggled underskirts, annuals and annuals worth, dragged across the broken brick. "Ah, eh…" Chortles turned into hacking. The farther she stepped from them, the blacker her back became; she transformed into a black speck amid greenery and purple wood sorrel.

Glitch watched her go, heart sinking into the unknown.

DG's hands rotated to her hips, as she rotated about. Her face filled with stubbornness.

"We're going home—to the palace, anyway. This guy you saw, Glitch, this owl hunter guy, I think he might be a legend. I'll have to check my Book of Unexpurgated Fairy Tales when we get back, but I think I know who it is you saw. And he was a phantom, a spectral man that inhabits woods and is seen by—" she hesitated, "by travellers."

Noting nothing untoward in her statement, Glitch nodded, glared behind him once more for a trace of the owl hunter, for Mother Kooky, but then his silent oath took hold.

A vow to ponder it no more.

His arm hooked with DG's, begged Wyatt to put away the map. What did they need it for?

"Let me tell you about Mother Kooky," he said. "I think she's been guarding me from peril. But since I'm with the two of you again, she has gone her own way. Such as it should be…"


	5. Chapter 5

**VOLUME 2**

**The Book**

XXVIII. Royal

The promenade through Central City was arduous on a rainy summer's afternoon.

The palace welcomed the wayfarers, welcomed Princess DG home.

Glitch barely had time to assemble himself to the social graces of his day, return them to his demeanour, before flung into the agendas of a kingdom. The suitors were still in tandem, lining up, and Azkadellia had had enough. Chessa Cain had fulfilled her promise to be there, with hugs and Issilthrush gossip.

While the family greeted with all the pleasantries of royal mannerisms, the travellers were hauled away, into various palace rooms, to clean themselves of forest dirt and dress themselves with care.

XXIX. Towel

Azkadellia relished in DG's return. "I've had no one to talk to about how wretched some of these suitors are. You should have seen the latest one, Deege. Her name is Felicitous Mogsberry, and she's from Greater Driemmkiggle in Kalladyn! Well," Azkadellia leaned into the lentil between bathroom and dressing room, her sister entombed beneath white, lily-scented froth, "I can't say that she's exactly homely, thank the stars and gods of beauty. She has charms enough, grace enough, and very sizeable breasts."

DG laughed. "I know one attribute you long for in your future life-time partner is sizeable breasts. You'd take grapefruits over apples any day."

"What?" Azkadellia had only heard a bit of what DG had said.

"Grapefruits are a kind of, um, fruit, from the Other Side. Bigger than apples, slightly bigger than oranges, smaller than Grinkri melons."

"Oh, right. From their name, I thought they would be the size of grapes."

"It is a misnomer, isn't it? Never thought of that before."

Azkadellia's run of daydreams feazed from breasts to the mundane. Sisterhood was better than marriage, any day. "She's very eager to meet you, I should say. But imagine being named Mogsberry, and not being ashamed of it."

"Who are the Mogsberries? Aside from a fine family whose surname was in consideration for a Dickens novel."

"The Mogsberries own half of West Kalladyn. Flour, the steam factory, the riverfront, the printing company, the telephone wiring company, and I shudder to think what my poor dissolved mind has missed from that list. There's a drop of royalty in her, somewhere. Mother explained it to me. A great aunt somewhere. One of our witch relatives."

DG paled and set to Azkadellia a wondering stare. "A witch? She's a witch?"

"Well, not much of one. Her magic is limited to parlour tricks. She does this thing with flowers and moths, you should see it."

"I will! Kalladyn! I should've thought of that before! Az, hand me the towel! I want to get dressed and meet this suitor of yours! As soon as I talk to Glitch!"

DG had the towel thrown about her, nothing else. Drips of bathwater streamed down her arms and legs, from moistened strands of hair garlanding her neck. She proceeded to dash out of the bathtub, out of the bathroom. Azkadellia called for her.

"DG, please put some clothes on before you see Glitch!" Then, to herself, "Honestly, how terribly immodest people must be on the Other Side…"

XXX. Shoe

Glitch had one shoe off, and one of Wyatt's off,

A few buttons undone,

A belt unbuckled,

And a horde of nuzzles and kisses released and returned

Before the knock on the bedroom door.

He walked, up for the shoe that was on,

Far down for the shoe that was off,

And found DG waiting there, in a dressing gown only.

"That is highly improper, DG," Glitch said, snorting, already aware of Wyatt's syrupy side-smile. "You'd better get in here before someone sees you loitering about with no clothes on."

She floated past him, and he caught of whiff of the perfumed air.

"You smell like a garden in June. Lilies again. Wyatt, go downstairs and fetch us a lily, would you, for our princess's hair?'

"I'm staying here," Wyatt answered gruffly. He let a finger rest under the little convexity of DG's chin, tilted in, leaving a small, sweet kiss on a soft spot beside her eye. "You smell like a princess, Princess."

"Wait, wait, wait! Before we make out with the—making out—Glitch?"

"Yeah?"

"There's a witch in the house."

"Oh, Azkadellia?"

"No."

"Your mother?"

"No."

"You?"

"No. Glitch—"

"Mrs Beitermann, the housekeeper? That wouldn't really be too bewildering, you see…"

"Glitch, it's Azkadellia's new suitor," DG clutched the lacy lapels of her dressing gown together. "Her name's Felicitous Mogsberry."

"A MOGSBERRY!"

Wyatt's snort was hardly musical. "Fantastic. A Mogsberry. Just what the House of Emerald needs."

"But she's from Kalladyn. West Kalladyn."

The meaning was, for a long moment, lost from Glitch's understanding, but immediately Wyatt understood. The image of a map flashed in his brain, then, through no effort, only coincidence, Glitch searched and found it too.

"Oh, West Kalladyn, where we saw the owl hunter, or the legendary corporeal apparition of him. How," his lips couldn't contain but a shaky grin, "how pleasant. A Mogsberry. I'm sure she'll rush to help the likes of me! What with all my attachment to wealth and power, oh yes, yes, a cavalcade of it do I own!"

He then took off his other shoe and threw it near the parlour stove.

"She knows what it's like, I'm sure… I'm sure she knows… What it's like to fear the other half of you, and know he's better than you because he's the half that's not afraid of anything. That he'll just appear out of the mist, a legend himself, and gallop through every problem of your life without care, concern, suspicions or happiness. He's a heartless beast… And the worst of him is how he's attached to me." Glitch rubbed a hand from collarbone to sternum. "He's in me… I'm terrified of something in me, that I created."

"You didn't," DG said, stepping to him. "You didn't create him. Glitch, I'm sure you're not the only headcase who's suffered from this. There have been others… If you, if we—if the breaking spell is found, you'll be healed again. And we can heal others. They're probably not as lucky as you've been. They don't have Wyatt and I to look after you, to crawl down narrow paths filled with cobwebbed trees, cross mouldering rope bridges over endless chasms to find you. Who else would do that but those that love you?"

His nose was tinged pink, his eyes reddened with the burning nearness of tears. At once he had DG in his arms, pressing her to him. "I am lucky… Wyatt, aren't we lucky?"

Wyatt had no answer to give that wasn't a repetition of DG's thoughts, but he nodded, finally free to remove his other boot. DG lapped kisses from Glitch, complacent in the face of his feistiness. When they were athwart the bed, however, Wyatt intervened.

"Glitch, you should let her go."

"Huh… easy for you to say. You've spent far more time with her the last annual than I have." He drew his fingers through the soft hair framing her face, then dived ferociously at her neck, growling in a canine fashion, and tugged at the dressing gown until it exposed her breasts. His boyish approach of love-making was giggled at, thought altered to seriousness as he loosened the robe's cinch, exposing her belly. A trail of kisses and licks meandered downwards to her warm nest.

Wyatt slapped Glitch on the shoulder, wakening him and DG to the reality of the moment. "We're in the palace. Let her go before someone comes after her. It's been four annuals. Do you want to give it up, now, when we're close to figuring this out?"

"No, you're right." Glitch made an emphatic show of closing DG's robe, but left a lick at the end of her nose. "You'd better go, Princess. Tread your lilies."

"I'm going to find my fairytale book, get dressed, and talk to Lady Kalladyn. Wait—maybe not in that order. But, just so you know, and have my opinion," the slyness in her voice inculcated a rumour of salacity. "You two will probably not be required to show yourselves until high tea."

She stole away, dressing gown of blue escaping just before the closing of the door. Without a moment wasted, Glitch tackled Wyatt, straddled him, maddeningly unbuttoning his shirt, impatiently caressing every patch of skin. Wyatt held Glitch's wrist, conscious of the undoing of mind, that might equal an ill pattern of mind.

"Glitch," he brought the wrists together in a rhythm, the patch of scar tissue conspicuous, frightening, though his eyes shone with purity, "are you ready for this?"

"Please stop talking when I'm trying to kiss you. Remember, Wyatt, I know how to make you shut up in bed." He'd made it as far as removing Wyatt's shirt, lowering his trousers, before stalling. "It's funny, I never thought of it before. A whole annual to the two of you, and it feels only weeks to me. I am sorry, Wyatt…"

His ache for Wyatt's touch was misplaced into lonely, abysmal melancholia.

A whole annual—

Stolen.

A thief without remorse.

"A whole annual without real love. That's something I won't get back from him. I can't give it back to you."

XXXI. Secrets

The search for the fairy tale book led her into rooms of the city palace she rarely entered. Once, during a tour, upon her return home, when it opened its doors for the royal family again, DG had seen all the rooms, from the lowest cellar, holding shelves and racks of ancient wines and spirits, to the narrowest, tallest spire, holding shelves and racks of unused furniture, trunks of crinolines, hats, cheese wheels, bustles, hair rats, perhaps even real rats. She'd seen where the household caretakers slept, in a row of little beds in a giant room, like something of a picturesque orphanage filmed in old movies back in the Other Side. Never had she spent more than a handful of days at the city palace, days of ceremony wherein she was expected to stand among her clan, crowned and counted. They were always elsewhere, between Finaqua and the palace in the north.

Being in town equalled convenience for Azkadellia's ream of suitors, whoever they should be. From the nonsensical to the deliberately drab, at least they could find Central City, climb the long hill of brick to the white palace, square, structures of three tiers, recalling in DG's mind Medieval palaces from Italy.

They could find it well enough. Guards out front, dressed in green, among the overhanging sprays of flowers, among the giant marble planters of "fiskee" trees, vinous things that had to be carefully pruned to let bloom their delicate pink buds all summer… Of course, inside, the world was different. Such a drab little place, as seen from its exterior, but beautifully redecorated, refurbished, brought to life again, throughout its interior. DG remembered, without a degree of fondness, being there two years ago and always running into decorators, designers, stone masons, electricians, carpenters. But safety and familiarity increased when DG asked Chessa Cain to come round, down from Issilthrush Mountain, and oversee some of the kitchen renovations. Chessa, Wyatt's niece, the daughter of his deceased brother, had been a worker on friendly terms with the family. Ahamo and Mother in particular were fond of Chessa. "You remind me of our DG," Mother laughed as she said it. "Always pottering about, fixing things, or finding something that needs doing-up."

The surprise was not finding Chessa Cain in the middle of the library floor, surrounded by parts and particulars of the most enormous chandelier.

"It isn't the most enormous chandelier in the house, you do realise," Chessa said, as they both stood staring at it. Big as a dinosaur constructed of bones, that DG had seen, as a child, brought together with wire and chinks at a museum in Lawrence. "The most enormous chandelier is in the dining room. That will be a fun masterpiece of repair, I'm sure."

"I thought you weren't supposed to do any work while you were here."

"Well, Uncle Wyatt asked me to come. I don't know why." She contradicted the statement immediately, blushing, and furious at herself. "Well, no, no—I know why. Naturally. I mean, you've been gone—you've been gone for such a long time. You and Uncle Wyatt."

DG asked if it showed how tired she was. "I'd like to make a decent impression of Felicitous Mogsberry when I meet her."

"You don't look as though you've been peregrinating, no. You look a little tired. Worried." Chessa touched DG's shoulder, hand sliding down the length of DG's arm, to grasp her hand. "Don't worry about it, whatever it is. Things have a way of sorting themselves out, especially when we don't believe they ever will. They're not like the rest of us, are they? They don't know what its like to look at a problem, whether it's a hole in the plaster or a lack of interpersonal communication, and know how to fix it. So," Chessa reset the mood, just as DG verged on wanting to confess everything, all problems minimal and great, harrowing and idling, "what'd you come to the library for? I can tell by your dainty little dress, that of a princess, that you're not here to help me change a bit of wiring in an old chandelier."

DG felt the thrall of Chessa Cain, and had many times before, in the length of annuals that had passed since the dawning of friendship. Chessa was a confidante, someone she went to for a sane voice when all other voices had become intolerable, insipid, monotonous phrases. Chessa was thoroughly Cain, in her ability to waiver ceremony; and she would, if she thought herself able to carry it off without garnering demeaning looks from her uncle, certainly treat her king and queen as persons in a pub, treat the with her jollity and humour and sincerity.

"I'm looking for a book."

"I think you're in the wrong room."

DG couldn't help but laugh. She needed one, relieving her of harboured frustrations.

"What sort of book?"

"A fairy tale book. Fairy tales of Western Kalladyn."

"Ah," Chessa's blue eyes carried a knowing look, "reading up on your future sister, are we?"

"No, I mean… I don't know."

"I didn't mean to speak of it so easily. Shouldn't build bridges till they need to be crossed, not just out of curiosity. Well, I'll help you look for a while, if you think it might be here."

The idea of having help enlivened DG, and she was grateful. "Aren't you coming to tea? High tea. The all-important high tea. It isn't an event one can miss."

They each took to a ladder, one for every wall, Chessa on the south side, DG browsing top to bottom, quickly, to Chessa's right. So many books, and how was she to find the one so desperately wanted?

"I wasn't really invited, although your parents welcomed me warmly enough. Azkadellia, too, of course. I haven't met Lady Mogsberry yet, but Zero claims she's very grand."

A freeze overcame DG at the sound of Zero's name. Through the annuals, it had come, as Zero had, passing through their lives, rays of blurry sunshine amid an unspeakable dreariness. He was an old friend of her father's, and DG had struggled, months and months, to remember this. Wyatt took a route of understanding, not extensively exculpating Zero for what he had done, under the influence and encumbrance of war. They promised, as best they could, to avoid one another. If it hadn't only just happened that Zero returned, to take the position as Captain of the Guard, following the quick retirement of Captain Markus, DG would have told Wyatt before. Zero was fit for the job, yet some days, as she recalled, not fit for work…

A book of fairy tales distracted her, listening with half an ear to Chessa's wholesome dialogue, while she fanned pages beneath her thumb.

"Did you find one?"

"It's not the one I was looking for, but it might do. It has 'The Tale of Warwick Pipkin'. It might be a viable beginning."

"Do you want me to keep looking?" Chessa asked from the ladder as DG hopped from the last rung to the ground. "I don't mind… As long as you don't mind me showing up to _high tea_," she drawled it in the brogue of an ancient Grande Dame, "in my working clothes."

"No," DG found herself smiling again; Chessa played, amused, was all docility beneath a blonde-haired, blue-eyed sheath of toughness with a small hint of feminine vulnerability. "No, don't bother. I might ask Mother or Dad, one of them might know what happened to it. It might not even be here. It could be," she sighed, Chessa reaching her to clench what went unstated, "anywhere."

"I suppose it could be. Maybe that will be enough," Chessa indicated the slim volume of old fairy tales, "for what you need."

"For now… I'll make it work." DG climbed carefully over parts of the chandelier. Daylight streamed through leaded pane windows, but it was not a room, DG surmised, that she would like to step into after dark, unless armed with multiple lanterns. What a capacious, enormous, vacuous space it was, full of narrow inlays, creepy portraits of forgotten ancestors, gewgaws and statuettes that might come alive with the kiss of a moonbeam. She turned about, to admire Chessa's bravery, standing there in a royal palace in man's trousers, white shirt with the sleeves rolled to her elbows, and, as the spirit of the true north shone through her, a plaid waistcoat in screaming bright colours, turquoise and yellow, white and green. A little lock of hair escaped from the knot at the back of her head, to cup gently at the slope where shoulder and neck met. DG, encapsulated by Chessa's amiability, returned just to brushed back the lock, not thinking of it.

"Am I an absolute mess?" Chessa fiddled with her hair, feeling that the pins might be about to pop from the knot. "I always feel that I'm a strain on your eyes whenever I see you. Remember the time I slipped on a patch of ice, fell into gunk of mud and slush, and immediately found you staring down at me, outside the general store? Not that, you know, I need to look nice for you, for any good purpose, other than—you're my friend and why shouldn't I look pretty for you? Anyway, go on, get out of here, so I can get some real work done."

DG stalled, wishing to say something, unsure how to turn that something into the substantial. Even the whimsical seemed to avoid her. "You've been nice to me, Chessa, when most people wouldn't have been."

"Well," Chessa's smirked spoke wonders, "I know your secrets. Most of them. Two of them. Now, go on, before I'm forced to say anything else that makes me feel incredibly awkward."

DG went, first kissing Chessa's cheek, and almost forgetting to grab the volume.

By the time she stepped from the room, The Tale of Warwick Pipkin skipped about in its lines and demonstrations in her head.

She turned a corner, seeing Zero at the end of the hallway, speaking to an attentive Azkadellia. This eventuated DG's withdrawal, around another corner, and up the back staircase.

Chessa was found, five minutes following this, by Azkadellia.

"Are you still at work on this antique carbuncle? I've wanted them to get rid of it for annuals, and they won't listen to me."

From her position in front of the "keys" that were once used to light the chandelier with the passage of steam that propelled oxyacetylene, Chessa lifted, to better serve Azkadellia's needs. "What can I do for you, Az?"

"Have you seen DG?"

"Oh, yes. She was here a few minutes ago."

"Did you tell her that Zero's come back?"

"It did show up in conversation."

"That's good. He'll be at tea, and I'd rather not have her surprised. Are you coming to tea? Felicitous is anxious to meet you. She's anxious to meet everyone. I've never seen a woman more deprived of society."

The colour fell from Chessa's typically rosy cheeks.

"Chessa, what is it?"

"I should like to ask a favour of you, Az. Only a minor one, nothing brassy. Promise you that."

Azkadellia admired Chessa, wished to hold their camaraderie in the idyllic position. She would never have a close girlfriend, never be as close with Chessa as DG, but there were polarities between them. "Name it."

"I was hoping you might lend me an afternoon dress. I'm afraid this," she held out the leg of her trousers as far as its width allowed, "is the nicest thing in my luggage. I packed in such a hurry, you've no idea. I'm lucky I remembered my tools."

"You want to borrow a dress?"

"Yes," Chessa nodded, "if you wouldn't mind."

"Not in the slightest." She possessed Chessa's elbow, gliding her from the array of wires, glass bulbs, wrenches, spanners, screwdrivers, sockets and spindles, and out of the room.


	6. Chapter 6

XXXII. Popular

In the bedroom, where she'd left Glitch and Wyatt, the couple were cuddled on the bed, drowsily observing her entrance.

"You found the book!" Glitch said, brought joy at the prospect of discovering some fairytale thread that might lead to solving the mystery of the owl hunter.

"It isn't the book I was thinking of. But you two can thumb through it. The Tale of Warwick Pipkin is the one you'll want to read. It mentions an owl hunter of some sort. I should go and help Mother set up tea. Wyatt," she tilted to be near him, close enough to see the wiry grey hairs in his eyebrows, the strands of it at his temples, the distinguishing wrinkles set beside his mouth, "did you know Zero's here?"

He drew an arm across his eyes, cutting out light and DG's concern. "I did, yeah." With his other hand, he dug a wadded paper, rolled then hastily folded, from a pocket.

DG unwound it, finding it was a telegram. It gave some words, things are fine, if you come back, Zero's here, just be warned.

Signed, with some sincerity,

Your son,

Jeb.

Her sympathetic look was shared with Glitch, full of this experience of shared pain. Glitch laid his hand on Wyatt's abdomen.

"At least you've heard from him."

"Heard from him? He's in and out of the city often enough," Wyatt wished they'd leave the topic in favour of something far more popular, "and he could see me if he wants. Not going to happen if Zero's here, is it?"

He's an old friend of my father's, DG wanted to remind them, just to remind herself. She set the telegram on Wyatt, leaving each of them with a press of her lips on theirs. "Don't be late for tea."

"Do you suppose I could be late to tea, Glitch," Wyatt spoke, long after DG left, "if I fell down and just happened to twist my ankle?"

"Wyatt, don't be a pouty bore. You know perfectly well that you and Zero are far too gentlemanly to throw the proverbial—or, in your case, literal—gauntlet in the middle of our queen's high tea. Besides, we'll be too busy with our interrogation of Felicitous Mogsberry." Already, The Tale of Warwick Pipkin held him rapt. He sidled, drawing cushions behind his back, and prepared to read the interesting bits, found while scanning, aloud to his spouse.

"Perhaps he was only an apparition, sent to guide me…" Glitch surmised at tale's end. "Does that release me, Marshal Cain, from having wanted to kill him?"

"It wasn't you."

"But he is a part of me."

"He isn't a big enough part of you that I'm afraid of you, or of him. We'll figure out this spell, Glitch, I know we will." Glitch's hand was soft and warm in his that were rough and dry. He patted it a final time, swooped in to lay a kiss where one beckoned, and stood from the bed. "I suppose I should wear something nice to this tea thing."

"I think we left some suits here. Find us those." Glitch continued to thumb through the book, to the front cover, where a scrawl of delicate chirography led him to challenge his skills of deciphering it. "This is a very old book. Belonged to Lainabella De Amorgioalla."

"Who?"

"No idea… I have this extremely hazy notion that she was a duchess of somewhere or another at sometime or another. Oh, the plum one, if you please." Glitch picked from the two suits Wyatt had held up, one black, the other the colour of plums near midnight. "I hope Lady Mogsberry is far more helpful than DG's good intentions, presumably tucked away somewhere in this little novel."

"I hope she is, too."

Glitch raised his gaze at a softening in the back of Wyatt's voice. A red stain had set into Wyatt's eyes, as though the stress of the last annual had only now come into his possession. He had glazed over it, always being strong, forging forward, never wrong, for the sake of saving DG from the tumult of his fear.

"I don't want to lose you again like I did."

Glitch closed the book with a slam, beckoned Wyatt, and positioned himself as he'd been before: a knee on either side, over Wyatt, till their lips were a breath apart. "I have this insane idea that we might be a good five, ten, fifteen, perhaps even a decent twenty minutes and thirty seconds absolutely truant to tea."

Wyatt complied, smiling into the kiss, glad to be squeezed at the hips by Glitch's powerful knees, stroked at the belly, hips, to the point of painful erection—and all over again.

But Glitch had an insane idea, too,

That somewhere, someone waited

With a bottle in her hands,

Full of poison for him. One that, when extracted into the exact dose, would release upon the world the unwanted side, an intruder named Ambrose.

XXXIII. Tea

Lady Felicitous Mogsberry was, as immediate assumptions required of those who hadn't yet met her, a very boisterous, pleasant sort of woman, who was shorter than all gathered in the garden. Fair she was, her face heart-shaped, captivating to regard, and ensnared one's attention for a lot longer than it otherwise might have, if it were just a degree prettier, or a degree plainer. She took to everyone she met, not put off by Zero's unintentional scowls, Ahamo's uncomfortable laughter, the Queen's interest in discussing nothing political (which was identically to nearly every subject presentable at a tea table on a summer's day), Wyatt's taciturn demeanour; Glitch's flamboyance, Chessa's country quaintness, and DG's unknown allure instantly established them as her instant companions. She paid due attention to Azkadellia, yet pored over a chance to hold an intimate confabulation with DG and Glitch.

On a walk about the garden, full of tea roses, geraniums, herbs, and lilies in the fountain, DG asked Felicitous a series of questions carefully steered.

"My grandmother was a witch," Felicitous said proudly, at last coming round to the portion DG and Glitch most wished to hear. She hurried, too, for Wyatt was perched for escape. "I inherited some of her talent, though not much of it. She was an Underwing, on her mother's side, a very established clan of germinal thaumaturgists. They practiced and theorised magics for over three hundred annuals."

The history continued, a drone of catalogued books, inventory of goods, strange assortments of animals that had come and gone throughout her family's home in Kalladyn during her youth; then when the animals were gone, the cobwebs came, and the rooms were sealed off, forgotten. Books were placed in the library, never to be read, only cherished as heirlooms of a lost gramarye.

"Glitch and I were talking about it, a little bit ago—weren't we, Glitch? About an old spell we'd heard the name of, but have forgotten what it does. Do you mind if we ask if you've heard of it?"

With happiness, Felicitous consented. She loved a challenge to the scope of her magical intelligence. "Please do, by all means!"

"It's called the Breaking Spell."

"Ah… H'mm…" Felicitous, deep in that idle junction between thought and forgetfulness, continued her triumphal traverse of the garden path. "The Breaking Spell. What an odd moniker it has, almost like a tease. It is a spell that break things, or is the spell itself breaking? I confess that, off the top of my head, you understand, I cannot positively say I do know of its origin, or what it's purpose is. But if you should allow me some time," her green-grey eyes focused on DG briefly, then Glitch, "I can possibly return to you with more forthright information. I'm afraid to give you any misleading clues. But what darlings the two of you are to give me a project to keep my mind occupied, while it is, should I discreetly declare, contemplating things that may or may not be."

"We will allow you all the time you need."

"Fantastic, my dear, absolutely. Now," Felicitous daringly brought DG's arm through hers, "will you tell me about this quaintness on the map you call Issilthrush? I'd love to hear more about it. I have never been farther north than Cairn Cotter, in the fields by the lake. Tell me about Issilthrush."

"You should ask Chessa Cain," said Glitch. He watched an inchworm swoop off a hydrangea leaf. "She lives there year-round, unlike us sojourners." His hand lapsed to the incurvation of DG's back. "I'd better rescue Wyatt before someone has to rescue Zero" was placed into her ear. His saving of Wyatt was appreciated by all present, who'd noted the tension and were convinced they had no talent to negate it.

DG fetched Chessa, and couldn't leave Azkadellia by herself. The four women traipsed among the roses, lilies, herbs, even the occasional stray dandelion, and talked of Issilthrush, and of various towns fondly and not so fondly remembered.

XXXIV. Perplex

Thoughts of change conditioned Glitch to accept the poorest portions of his character. He looked out upon the twilit world, searching in the silhouettes of tall Central City buildings for the slightest hint of familiar movement, a shadow within itself that might give itself away, become animated, lunge at him—in the shape of Ambrose. When Wyatt came from behind, arms lassoing at his waist, Glitch's comfort was brief, his perplexity steadfast.

"I still think he's coming for me."

"You don't have to be afraid of him, not here. We're with you."

"I'm not afraid, Wyatt… I'm bewildered. How did this toxicity come to exist in me?"

Wyatt's answer was a kiss tucked into Glitch's frowsy hair, a hold that tightened. "It doesn't matter."

If Wyatt believed this, without trivialising the fragmentation, Glitch's unspoken oath became to be as brave as he could. He'd learned it well, fighting for Wyatt, alongside DG, when they hadn't known the source of the battle, the face of the enemy. He patted Wyatt's hands, watching the city lights and glum summer fog effuse.

"I miss Chimtu and Raw," he eventually said, pondering his absent friend and faithful companion, nouns interchangeable.

"Chimtu is staying with Raw, though I suspect the two of them are eating frequently at Meria's."

"Raw never could resist dining at a tower. I should've stayed," ventured Glitch into the what-ifs, "and asked Meria about the spell."

"You did, Glitch." Wyatt nuzzled him, finding this fault excusable: anything over an annual ago was excusable from memory's glue. "She sent you on the quest, when you found out she'd never heard of the Breaking Spell."

"How did I hear about it? I mean, how did I find out its name? That—that I can't remember."

This evaded Wyatt as well, but he was disinclined to exhibit ignorance.

The next morning, he cornered DG, and asked her about it.

"Did you tell him the name of the spell?"

She shook her head, eyes wide and thoughtful, full of the same ambiguous meaning that latched irrevocably to him. "I never did…"

"Then how did he know what he was looking for?"

"Maybe it was old information, from before—before you and I met him. Maybe it's something he heard when he wandered the realms, looking for his brain—for Ambrose. There are headcases all over, Wyatt. It's possible that he might've heard it from one of them." She handled their moment alone well, holding him, soothing his worries. "You, of all of us, shouldn't have come back here yet. With Zero, and Jeb… And those threatening to marry me. My poor Wyatt."

Wyatt seized her shoulders, unsure what to do, what agony to release first. His brow sunk to hers, eyes wincing shut in a grimace. "Do you want to get married, DG? I wasn't going to bother you about it, and I wasn't going to interfere."

"I don't know…" Seeing Wyatt's frustrations erupt like this eroded her will. "I always thought Azkadellia would marry, and, eventually, I'd become a minor family secret, the unmarried princess. It isn't the common road, maybe, but it would be my road, and I would've been happy travelling it."

"Would've been?" He scanned her for hints of meaning. "Why say that?"

The reply was too long delayed. Wyatt cupped her jaw, emphasising the desire to wring it from her.

"Why say that, DG? Why have you changed your mind?"

"Nothing… It's just, I—" The intensity of love for him, for Glitch, whelmed and numbed. She tilted, escaping his hands, till placed against his chest. "I think sometimes that Azkadellia won't marry without me promising I'd do the same. She's worried about—about what will become of me. She doesn't want me to be left behind. Maybe she wants me to go first this time. I don't know Wyatt, I don't… I need to talk to her. I was trying to fortify my courage to do that when you came in."

"Now I've just made you a wreck again. Sorry. But don't do anything regrettable. I would've married you, if I thought it would've gone over well with your parents."

"It was better that you married Glitch, and… We've talked about that already, years and years ago, it seems. Water under the bridge, all of that. It's just time that I knew what Azkadellia expects of me, and realise how much I hate living my life for other people's expectations."

An unnatural noise, shuffling feet, and dialogue slipped through drawing room's closed door. DG rose on tiptoe, kissed him.

"I'd better go. Should find Az, get this over with."

Wyatt let her leave without troubling her about incomplete thoughts, the malignant scattering of his emotions making all of it incomprehensible. He suffered for a long while, standing in silence, looking out the window to the dreary, rainy day. The history of his existence struck him, from beginning: the conventionality of his upbringing, the conventional marriage of his parents, his brother, their deaths; his own conventional marriage to Adora, his lacking performance as a father all the annuals away from Jeb; the unusual complexity of change, as he swallowed it, removed from the suit and finding DG and Glitch. Or how it was, now, in the present looking over his shoulder at who he'd been, who they'd been, that it was DG and Glitch that found him.

For a long while he stood before the window, awaking to the imprecations of change, that things, from Glitch to DG, because of a spell or for no reason at all, wouldn't be the same.

"Oh, Uncle, there you are!" Chessa delivered herself into the room, beaming brilliantly, a spanner in one hand, a smudge of dust on her cheek, a red kerchief tied over her hair. "Can I inveigle you to help me for a bit? If it's not too much trouble. Are you all right?"

Chessa, who knew their secrets, carried by the three of them, who'd found out through her own astute assessment, and announced it boldly one evening over mashed potatoes and gravy, had an inclination of her uncle's declining mood. He frowned, a tension in his mouth, his fists clenched. He stared at her, then again through the panes to silvery rainfall from heavy grey-blue skies.

"Chessa… DG might have to get married."

Her countenance deflated, showing the burden entering by the downward slide at her shoulders, the laxness of her limbs. She tapped the spanner against her leg. Woe was not something she often pondered, or dreamed of contemplating. She never had any herself, save for rare pains for her remembered parents, gone over a dozen annuals. But she'd walked in sunbeams all her life, dismay rarely known to her.

"I am sorry, Uncle Wyatt. I know the situation is delicate. Always has been. She is a princess; she has obligations. But I'm sure that if she told her parents she had no wish to marry, they would fight it at first, but come to respect it." To indicate assurance of her proclamation, she petted his arm, smiling her industrious, good-hearted smile again. "It will work out, you'll see. In the interim, and slight change of subject to keep your mind active, any word yet on the spell?"

"DG and I were trying to figure out how Glitch might've heard about the spell. Meria sent him on the quest, but Glitch went to her for information about that specific spell. We don't know how he learned of it." He went on to summarise DG's speculation, and rounded the conversation into conjecture as he followed Chessa through the palace.

"That's a very lively recipe of quandaries you've acquired, Uncle Wyatt."

"Yeah."

"I don't have an answer for any of them."

"Me either. What am I supposed to help you with?" He wanted to know quickly, as he thought Zero was outlined just ahead, down the length of the corridor. Always skulking about, the mimicry of shadows formed when he'd been Ahamo's personal guardsman, and re-established as his membership in the Longcoats expanded, now as captain of the royal knights.

"It isn't Zero," Chessa stated, already knowing her uncle's pain. "It's Sir Claude, one of the guards."

So it was, as they passed Sir Claude in the wideness of the corridor. Nods were exchanged as greetings. Chessa went on with gossip.

"I heard Mrs Beitermann say that Zero was confined to his room this morning, some ailment or another. It's all right; I won't think less of you if you say how glad you are to hear that."

It wasn't that, but only, for the first time since seeing Zero yesterday, Wyatt realised one thing he'd missed of his old enemy.

Zero hadn't looked entirely robust. He hadn't looked the least bit healthy, the slightest bit hale. Zero was ill.

XXXV. Scatter

The conversation with her sister left DG dazed, doused in her dim bedroom. The shades were drawn hastily, behind curtains of blue and white, faille and lace, the whole room brightened still by these interwoven shades. DG closed her eyes tightly against them, glad for the solitary sense, the aloneness of her private place. She wanted to think.

To think might release the pains of this sudden confinement.

But no matter how tightly she closed her eyes,

How tightly she tucked herself into a ball,

Nothing could make truth suddenly untrue.

It was too true. Azkadellia, through tears, said she would feel best if, somehow, she knew marriage might come for both of them.

Asking why proved fruitless, and in this lacking fecundity, DG grasped the elusive. Too tangled and provoking, she could spend hours unfolding its edges, more mess beneath.

She'd rather leave the pieces scattered, unknown, flitting about on the warm and fickle wind.

She was nearly twenty-seven annuals, without the intention of marrying. She'd never wanted to, not the whole while when Glitch was solely hers, and not when they diverted their love among two each. So simple, the equation. The effort to claim happiness was deceptively effortless. Or the deception wasn't in its effortlessness…

It wouldn't be settled,

Or dealt with,

Without her bristling to feistiness, to an insoluble temper.

It angered. Maddened. Sent her flying into sobs one moment, into laughter the next.

What was she to tell Azkadellia? Trust her with the secret of loving two men, and never seeing a day when that would cease?

It wouldn't be settled.

Her thoughts would be bettered by the quality of her actions then.

The outlook of her situation was not so bleak,

Not when she had Glitch to protect, to heal, as only magic could.

After all, she was a witch.

One of the many, she reasoned, another sob clinging to her throat,

That didn't know the Breaking Spell

From the simple magic that twirled dolls through the air.

A knock quickly dried dampened cheeks, as she called for the visitor to enter.

She was glad to see Chessa enter the room alone. No other company would've been as welcome. She worried Mother would want to speak to her in private, saying things she didn't want to hear, with whiny responses she didn't want to hear in a voice that couldn't be her own.

"Hello, were you napping? Sorry if you were."

"I wasn't. Just thinking."

"Ah, Uncle Wyatt said you were plagued by this marriage business." Chessa helped herself to the end of the bed. "You don't want to talk about it right now, just want to think about it." She engaged in careless persiflage about DG's room. "Looks like I'm inside a snowflake. I would think that, wouldn't I, an Issilthrush baby."

"I'm fond of snow. We didn't have it much in Kansas. Some ice, some snowy instances, but nothing like Issilthrush." DG wondered after the purpose of Chessa's visit. It was soon discovered.

"Came to tell you that Felicitous Mogsberry is pottering about the library, sending telegrams to a series of relatives, asking about the spell. She mumbled something to me about the path of bones. Didn't know what that was about."

DG told her about Glitch's discoveries. "We don't know what the path of bones means. I can't help thinking it's all connected. The owl hunter. Ambrose. Headcases. That old hag we saw on the road, Mother Kooky. This road of bones. What are bones? Maybe we're thinking to literally. We should think laterally."

"Bones are made of calcium salts and collagen fibres, I suppose. That's my best guess."

A finger ran across DG's bottom lip, postulating on the experience of bones. "They are the remainders of the dead."

"Cemeteries? Mausoleums? Sarcophagi? Um… Temples?"

"Maybe it's not peoples' bones. Animals…" For a moment, it captured her, the faintest spark, zooming her into an upright position. Then, like all sparks, it faded, leaving a scintillating impression behind shut eyelids. "I don't know… I don't know anything."

"That sounds hopeless."

DG collapsed against a wall of pillows, ornamental and shams. "It is hopeless. We'll never get this sorted."

"At least you don't carry the burden by yourself. I'm pleased everyone's rushing about to help. Even Zero's helping Lady Kalladyn, as much as he is able. Seems he's recovered well from this morning's bout of ill health. I think legends and myths amuse him more than he lets on. Azkadellia is browsing through old family journals."

"You do know the antics of the household."

"I'm very observant," laughed Chessa.

"I suppose I should stop being lazy, quit feeling sorry for myself, and help."

"You're doing just fine." Her fingers flexed in DG's wavy obsidian locks, diaphanous against glittering patterns of sham fabrics, icy, pale blues and stark whites. "Do you want anything?" She anticipated the humorous reply. "Anything I can give you, that is."

But they were interrupted by another knock, another entrance. The pale and apprehensive face of Azkadellia.

"You'd better come, DG."

"Why—? What—?"

Her brown eyes pleaded for silence and understanding. "It's Jeb," was all she managed, before stepping away.

"Jeb…" DG's curiosity swung to Chessa, who helped her rise, who combed stray hairs from her warm and moist face. "I wonder… What do you think he wants?"

"Maybe to see his father for the first time in four annuals?"

DG was thoroughly dazed. "Why now? There has to be a reason… I only hope it isn't to spill Zero's blood. Come on." She gripped Chessa's hand, suddenly knowing the sensation of bravery, and damning every aspect of its consequences.


	7. Chapter 7

XXXVI. Fuss, Next

Jeb and Wyatt were ensconced in a room, far from the prying eyes and bothersome stares of friends and family. DG was ushered, by Vy-Sor, through a back corridor, into the daytime drawing room. Chessa still clung to DG's hand, and squeezed it affectionately before dropping the grasp, before entering the room.

Felicitous rushed at once to her companionable girlfriends. DG hovered inconsequentially between nodding and simpering amicably in response to Felicitous. She saw Glitch in the background, in layers of shirts and a long blue pinstripe overcoat with black velvet collar, looking blue as the moon in mid-morning. She wanted terribly to comfort him, without knowing how. Four annuals of deception, lies they'd told her parents, their friends, about their relationship, all of it produced affliction, and left her without knowing how to hide her love for him, for Wyatt. When the tears choked in the back of her throat, DG wanted to rush from the room, already dropping her head, running through a list of excuses. But Chessa, reliable and stalwart, clever and quick enough to carry it off as genius, suddenly interrupted Felicitous.

"I just remembered that I want DG to help me fix one of the electrical outlets in the upstairs powder room. The mice are getting cranky about it, not being able to dry their fur after a bath. Will you excuse us?" She curtseyed stiffly to Lady Kalladyn, Princess Azkadellia, and took DG from the room so swiftly that there was no chance of DG's relaying a farewell.

She dragged DG so far as the next alcove, and hid themselves there. She peeked round the edges to assure herself of corridor's emptiness, before holding DG close, now free to cry as much as she chose.

"I don't know what I'm doing anymore… If he would just stop being in so much pain, if I knew how to fix it… I don't know what's going to happen to him."

"Nothing bad, and you know it."

"I'm sorry… I feel like every time you see me, I'm crying."

"It's not so bad. You go right ahead and make as much of a fuss as you want. It doesn't bother me any."

"No, no, I think I'm done, for now." She took the proffered handkerchief, wiping beneath her nose, her eyes, and pocketed the cloth when it was refused.

"Maybe Jeb's talking to Uncle Wyatt because he knows something, something that'll help us find the spell."

It attacked DG again, images that strung together, flowing one image to the next, a river connected to a stream, connected to a ravine, connected to a gulch. But she couldn't get there, finding she was drawn from the flow and into the sky. "I need to go somewhere quiet and think."

"You've done enough of that standing still stuff. I think you should work for a little while. Come help me fix this chandelier. You can think and use a screwdriver at the same time, can't you? Of course you can, a talented lass like you."

So DG was carried away to the drawing room, the jumble of chandelier parts, electrical wires, and delved into the task. All the while, Chessa kept silent, abetting DG's thoughtfulness. Evoked from nothing was a whimsical desire to break from the chore, but not before they'd called in Vy-Sor and Sir Clyde to help hoist the chandelier back in place through a system of ropes and pulleys. Her mind strayed then, from what it intended to do, to the happenings of Jeb, how Wyatt fared having finally spoken with his son, who'd only sent him telegrams, the occasional post card, through the annuals.

With the chandelier returned to its place, her parents were called to see it, Ahamo showering her with praises of her talents, her mother less so, but praising her less with words, more with kisses.

"You look," Mother struggled for the proper definition, "you look tired, my dearest. You should rest a while, after all your hard work."

When they left, DG begged Chessa not to leave her alone. "If I'm by myself, I'll cry and cry, and I always feel useless when I cry so much. Will you stay? Do you have something else to do?"

"No… I…" Chessa momentarily tightened her mouth, hands mounted at her waist. "I thought I might take on the debacle of a door upstairs, but that can wait. What'd you have in mind?"

"Art," DG answered simply. "It helps clear my mind."

Her studio, a room tucked away in one of the back turrets, far from distractions, and a long climb for anyone to make if they wished to speak with her, was stone-walled, cold even on a summery day. While Chessa set a fire in the grate, DG set out large tablets of sketch paper, readied her charcoals, and asked Chessa if she knew any songs.

"Songs? Oh, you know I don't sing very well."

It wasn't exactly true. Many Sunday dinners at Issilthrush were filled with Chessa's piano playing, her sweet, delicate, breathy soprano, so different than her gruff speaking voice, filling the cosy cabin from rafters to bowels.

"I'll sing with you. I just want to hear something that isn't our breathing. Let's sing 'Tamaryn Unkind'. I've always liked that song…"

"It's a depressing tune, all done in minor chords, about unrequited love."

Nevertheless, DG sang it, and Chessa was possessed by the same contagion. Sketches flowed from the fluidity of DG's movements, into sparse drawings of figures in a village; of a valley with a narrow, blithe confluence with crows flying overhead; of a graveyard hidden behind numerous arbour furcations. When they'd moved on to sing other songs, some far more jolly than 'Tamaryn Unkind', a final piece of art nearly frightened DG, when she realised its design.

"It's a cottage," Chessa said, peering at it from a stance close behind DG. Something strange about its shape, its materials…

"It's a cottage made of bone."

Like something from a myth, a fairy tale. A story no one had ever heard, of a witch no one knew. Mistress of the bone cottage, and proprietor of the Breaking Spell.

"I wonder," Chessa continued, as DG was too bewildered to calculate potential augury, "what this might mean?" She set her chin and DG's shoulder, finally reaching to take from her loosened fingers the stalk of charcoal that had birthed the imaginative, boorish place. DG was too dumbstruck to answer, only with a question of her own.

"It's the same thing I always ask myself. What happens next?"

XXXVII. Pin, Prodigal

Jeb did not leave forever: he came back throughout the course of days following. His repaired relationship with his father seemed promising, and Wyatt was brightened, though not giddy, about the prospect of their healing. He spent his time, as often as he could, with Glitch and DG, while Glitch needed him more, and DG seemed to exist so briefly that she was hard to catch. Even glimpses of her were as rare as rainbows. He pinned her at night, sneaking into her room, to find reasons for her hesitations, if she was all right.

"I'm not all right… I just need to think about things." He'd listened, he'd obeyed. It was a series of messages relayed to Glitch. She didn't want him to know, later telling him that it hurt her so much. "I don't know what to do for you, but I'm trying everything, everything I can." She wanted to rescue him, twirl him out of his misery, into the mystery of their life cultivated at the base of Issilthrush mountain, in a little cabin of a home they had built out of love and hope.

But change was indigenous to the clime, coming, coming,

Fretful as a passing evening storm.

The cottage of bone roared through DG's conscious unmitigated, unchecked. It clashed terribly with all her intelligence. It burned against the improbable. Brilliantly it shuffled among the mundane, ever-shining against the impending onslaught: her doom, if she shouldn't find it hidden somewhere…

"A cottage, though," she said aloud, one afternoon, as she and Chessa had escaped to the turret studio. "Witches don't live in cottages, Chessa. Everyone knows they live in towers. Towers of stone, impenetrable stone… Not these tiny-roomed places built of bone. With a path of bone leading to a door of bone." She let the picture drop, flutter to the flat surface. Turning about, she saw Chessa, squatting on the cushions before the hearth, a stark stare into the flames.

"I was listening," said Chessa, aware that she seemed moved from the situation. "But I wanted to ask you something."

"The something that you've been coming closer and closer to asking me for days, and when I ask you about it, you change the subject? That something?"

"I don't know if it's all the same. It's about this marriage business. Azkadellia wants you to get married first, doesn't she? So she's not so afraid when she has to go through with it?"

"She says so." DG left the array of tables in tandem to kneel upon the cushion beside Chessa. In overalls, standard mini-checked shirt, red kerchief, sturdy shoes, even living in the palace for a week left her unchanged, the unalterable Northern girl who couldn't be changed by the prodigal lifestyle of royalty. "Az is terribly afraid of doing something wrong. None of her suitors are the love of her life. She wants to be loved, not looked after. I can't imagine where we princesses have gathered our independent spirit, what with our mother and all. Are you worried about Azkadellia? Don't be."

"I'm not, but I am worried about you."

"I haven't made up my mind yet. I'm not sure Azkadellia's right. How would my marrying help her?"

"What if it's a trap?"

"Wait, a trap? What do you mean?"

"A trick, a ruse. Maybe she knows about you and Uncle Wyatt and Glitch, and only wants you to confess. Seems a bit off for her, though, doesn't it? She's not that cruel."

"She would just ask me. She hasn't. She never has… Although one time," DG recalled it, neither with indecency of feeling towards her sister, nor with heavy regard towards her inconclusive reply, "why I enjoyed going to Issilthrush so often, staying as long as I could. I only told her I went because my friends were there… I should've told her more, or something else. I should've told her that I feel feckless when I'm in town. A worthless princess. I suppose that's why I'm considering it at all, marrying before Azkadellia. It might be a way for me to feel useful, not only to her, but to my parents, to the kingdom, the O.Z."

For a long while, silence permeated the little round turret room, with only the crackles of a vigorous fire, the occasional sparrow chirping on the closest series of climbing vines near the window. DG wished they drop the subject, hating to do so, but it seemed to injure everyone it touched, from her to, for all she knew, Vy-Sor, who certainly had his opinions as much as any member of the staff, of her family.

"DG," Chessa pounced on DG's hands with both of hers, smiling in the utmost kindness, "I think you should marry me."

What happened next astounded DG, would've astounded anyone with intuition enough to know the happenings of hearts and the mysticism of souls.

DG said yes.

For hours, she didn't regret it. The scheme was too perfect. Chessa, who already knew DG's real loves, who already knew her faults, her quirks. Chessa, who lived in Issilthrush, who'd be such a viable excuse, in addition to Glitch and Wyatt, for so often visiting the city, for staying weeks on end. Chessa, already adored by her family, welcomed by them, whose talents surprised and pleased. The arrangement was soon established between them.

"Thank you," whispered DG, her thumb running along the back of Chessa's wrist. "Thank you for doing this."

"It isn't how I wanted to ask you, if I had to ask you. I figured I should," Chessa sat back with a long sigh, gazing out the window, brushed with the rose vine leaves, "before you did something rash, whatever that would've been. I never thought of asking anyone to marry me before. Then I wondered if I should do it the right way. I would've dragged you on a walk through the rose garden at twilight, when the sky was pink and purple and blue, and mist was on the lilies in the fountain, and crickets and nightmoths were just beginning to waken. Before the street lamps came on and ruined the romanticism. I suppose I would've asked you then, like that, but this is as good as my romanticism gets. My imagination," she shook her head, "doesn't compete well against my need for practicality. So, who should we tell first?"

DG went straightaway to Wyatt, who had things to tell her before she could tell him. All about Jeb, what he intended to do, and whether or not he might consider leaving Issilthrush and taking a house in town. "I might see him more often if we did. And you, too, if Azkadellia's going to get married."

"Wyatt?"

"Yeah?"

It seemed so absurd, and yet… "Chessa asked me to marry her."

He stared, ashen tainting his cheeks, dimming his eyes.

"I said yes. It's the best solution, Wyatt, you can see that."

"You're kidding. Solution? DG! You—! But you—!" He crushed her, nearly hurt her, with the force of his kiss. She moved back to the length of his arms, the gaze between them emotionally intense, brimming on remorse, hatred, doubt, and conviction. "You're sure about this?"

"It'll be fine, fine… At least we're fond of one another. She knows where my heart lies. There isn't a greater truth or a better foundation of trust to have in someone. But I wanted your permission first. Glitch will be battered by it, even if he feigns indifference. But you, you're her uncle, and I wanted to be sure…" Her fingertips slid across his mouth, his chin, weakening her will. "Just don't think less of me."

"I won't," he held her close, cuddling her hand in his, "and neither will Glitch."

"Good," she breathed the word rather than said it. "Good…"

Glitch lay on the bed, covered in an afghan, dozing, "dreaming dreary things…" He sat up and coveted DG, the warm body placed in front of his. He sighed languidly, mournfully, into her twirled lovelocks as she made her declaration. For a long while, no attempt to converse was made. Then, when he'd kissed the side of her face, he had his words, but they were disconnected to the moment, only released from the torture of his heart.

"Do you know, DG?"

She saw his face in profile, the sharp features dark against daylight.

"I think I'm beginning to get a little homesick. Homes disappear, don't they? Over time, what they were to us fades away, though the foundation might be there. Oh, I might still have rutabagas in my garden, and pumpkins in the patch out back, but what of it? If I'm not there, what are they? Carbon, dirt, soon to be mould, soon to be weeds. Homes do disappear. And reappear, when we don't think they will. My little chickadee," his nose nuzzled the sensitive space behind and below her ear, "fly home someday, before it's too late. I think it's too late for me."

"Wyatt said he was thinking of taking a house here. You can't think he'll mean to stay in town all year. He wouldn't do that. He would hate it. Issilthrush suits him."

"I'm not as sure as you. Your conviction of youth, lucky you, like a red rose on a bush of white, as always. He worked here once, and lived not far from here… It wouldn't be unheard of. Isn't it incredible, absolutely incredible, the things people do for their families?"

The pattering of affection caused her to say she loved him.

"We'll find this cottage of bone. I won't marry Chessa until I do, until I'm sure you're safe. I'm not abandoning you, Glitch."

"No, no… I never thought of that. Never, in all my wiles and weirdness of ways, did I think of that… Of all the things in this crazy world, locked inside my crazy noggin, that have to change, my love for you isn't one of them. You will always have it."

"You will always have mine."

"I never thought of it another way."

DG left him to consider his thoughts, to resume his nap if he wished. The sentences were crumbled and looped in her, though, by the time the door closed.

I never thought of it another way.

Only when she went into the garden, for a moment alone, standing in front of the bush of white roses, did she think he might've been speaking of something else.

Of bones that made a cottage.

She flashed her hand over a rose.

The white petals gave way to red.


	8. Chapter 8

**VOLUME 3  
The Tale**

-x-

XXXVIII.

Amid the fomentation of DG's impending marriage, suitable to her parents, though surprising, alarming to Azkadellia though pleasing, DG hastened to elaborate as much as she could on the cottage of bone.

"I don't know what it means, Az." The conference with Azkadellia, who understood the magic underlying their actions far better than anyone, was the beginning of DG's first day engaged. "It's a cottage of bone. But if it belonged to a witch, it would be a tower."

Azkadellia's ideas were water, thin, quickly diluted. "I'm sure I haven't the faintest idea. Witches didn't always live in towers, did they?"

"In the oldest stories, maybe not. But imagine it, a house of bone, or even a tower of bone. But things aren't always what they seem. Especially a house. It could be bigger on the inside than it looks. It could be crowded."

The paper containing the single sketch rotated round and round by the insistence of her fingertips.

"There's still something I'm missing, a piece I've lost, can't find, don't know how to find. This is all connected."

"What is?"

"Towers, bones, paths, cottages, the spell, the woman who turns into a crow, the owl hunter. I wish Tutor were here. I'd ask him for advice. Even if I didn't ask him for it, he'd give it anyway."

The thought of dead companions sent her adrift, away from the outline created by charcoal in her hand, to Raw who was far away, who was getting older. And, as if knowing he was about to be thought of, though no particular friend of hers, Zero entered the music room.

"Your father wants to see you," he told Azkadellia. He had just come from visiting Ahamo, had come to relay the message.

Azkadellia's fine mouth tightened, tilted, as up she rose to make good on her promise to speak with her father on matters unknown. Zero lingered, poised near enough the desk to espy the sketch.

"Is this what you've been carrying everywhere? A picture?"

"I'm trying to find out what this place is."

"Looks like a house, though I don't know anyone who would want to live there. Is this a place you've seen before?"

"Never, never… that I can remember."

"The two princesses of the O.Z. have a standing with the gods, the gift of prophesying. Maybe it doesn't exist yet, but it will. Maybe it existed so long ago that you're the only one whose soul is old enough to remember."

She hadn't spent enough minutes congruently with Zero, save for dinner, for tea, if he should happen to be there, when he would hardly speak, to have any understanding of how the world was perceived.

"It's tied in to something else." She hesitated, deciding to risk it, divulging a bit of it. "It's what I need, maybe, to help Glitch feel better." Her gaze intruded on him. "Maybe you, too, though I think the ailments might be a little varying here."

"I've felt an improvement since the healers made me a different elixir. Your conclusion, then, is that this place already exists, or did once. What is it?"

"I already said that I don't—"

"What does your intuition think it is? That's easier to answer."

"A house," the nouns stumbled out of her, "a house that a witch might've lived in. But no established witch lives in a house, not even if the house is made of bones."

"Bones? H'mm." He angled to alter his sight of the stationary landscape. "May I?"

She gave permission for Zero to touch it. He swerved it from horizontal to vertical.

"What's the difference between a portrait and a landscape? You're an art student, Princess. You should know this."

"A landscape's almost always painted horizontal on a canvas." She rotated the picture to visualise the reply. "A portrait is vertical." One of the portraits, of someone's daughter in a white dress, hanging on the pale pink wallpaper with white dusty wreaths, was pointed to. He regarded it briefly.

"I think the problem with this is that you've done it wrong. It goes this way."

He moved it vertical.

"Now what do you see?"

She had seen it from that perspective so many times, but she hadn't looked for a change in the image. Now its depth was off, where she'd put trees in the background, and now the forefront tree became the slice of a river cutting through a valley, and another tree became hills on the horizon. It was an illusion. The image had been correct, all the while, but that she'd only looked at it wrong.

"A house… A house of bone on a hill. Or a cliff. A jagged cliff with wispy, meagre hills behind it. But how—how did you see it and I didn't?"

"I saw it vertically first, and I think you must've shown it to everyone else holding it horizontally, like a landscape. They carried your perspective of it, seeing what you saw. But I hadn't seen it before, until just now, when I walked in. Look at it again. Couldn't it be more than what it is? A hill, a cliff—or the ruins of a tower once standing on a cliff, with the ruins now the foundation of a house of bone? A perfect place for a witch to live."

"Oh my god… You know this place! You know where it is!"

Zero sighed, leaning tiredly against the end of the desk. "It's Bone Hill. It's far outside Poul Mairëad, in County Nayne. It's a far, far ways from here, DG. If you're going to go, you had better pack light, and go quickly, by horses if you can."

So overcome with jubilation, DG dived in to peck his cheek, grabbing his forearm. "Thank you, Zero! Thank you a thousand times!" Elation squeaked out of her as she scurried from the room, less aware that she'd left him behind, unsure, from the beginning, why he'd stayed to speak with her in the first place.

She found Azkadellia waiting in her bedroom, her pale yellow gown a bright ruffle of sunlight in a snowflake-inspired room.

"Az! Az! I have some news! Wait." DG halted, scanning one corner to the other, then Azkadellia anew. "Why are you in my room?"

"I came to speak to you. I have some news myself."

"Ah! You first, if it is good news. You don't mind if I just—? No, of course you don't." DG proceeded to open wardrobe doors, rooting through its contents, shirts and sweaters and trousers, for travelling clothes.

"Well, Father wanted to see me, so I went, and he… He…"

"Spit it out, Az. He what? Wants you to cook dinner tonight? Thinks that shade of yellow doesn't look very good on you? He'd be wrong. What, Az?"

Before DG calculated the length of ten seconds, Azkadellia was weeping, taking a handkerchief out of her sleeve and weeping. The words were broken through her heavy breathing.

"He says I can get married if I want… And I guess I'd better… But, oh, DG… He wouldn't let me do it…"

"Do what?" DG grasped her sister by the arm, stunned with a coldness suddenly pooling near her heart. "What, Az? Seriously…"

"He wouldn't let me marry who I wanted to—he won't let me!"

"Who'd you want to marry that was so awful, even for him? I mean, I love our parents, but Felicitous Mogsberry, really, that's who they would've chosen as a future Consort? Who would've been worse than a Mogsberry worming her way into the House of the Emerald?"

It was a long while, many great gulps and spasms of sobbing, before Azkadellia clutched DG, head on her shoulder, and DG already had her answer.

"You wanted to marry Zero. Oh, for the sake of the stars, Azkadellia, no! Why? Why? It's as insane as me marrying Chessa Cain! Or me—me, marrying Zero! He's known you since you were in baby aprons and—and practically in the womb!"

"Oh, DG, don't you start!"

"Start! Cripes, I didn't even know… I didn't even know you liked him! Loved him! Wanted to—!"

The images defeated her courage. She waved a hand, flouncing them away as hurriedly as possible.

"I don't want to see—to know—oh god, oh god… This is hurting my brain! Az! How could you?"

"I'm… sorry… It's just that… that…"

"What?"

"That it wouldn't matter so much, if I were married to him, would it? No demands, no forever, nothing like that… I wouldn't have to endure too much. And I thought, maybe… But there's no point in it now."

Azkadellia enfolded DG in a timid hug, then dashed from the room, deaf to protests.

"I cannot think about this now. I cannot. I have a trip to plan. To Poul Mairëad. County Nayne. As soon as I find out exactly where that is, I'll find out who's going with me. Guess I can count out Azkadellia, and Zero, by the looks of it. Just as well. I'm talking to myself again. Shut up, DG. Focus!"

Her eyes shut, she breathed deeply, in the centre of her room. For a moment, she attached herself to it, the ever-present spin of the world, and outside the world, to the rotation of suns and moons…

Then she started to laugh.

-x-

XXXIX.

The Queen, fresh from a meeting, but with the blooming energy of the day extinguished, heard from Adviser Madeleine that DG wished to hold a conference. In her office, DG was not the only guest. Wyatt and Glitch and Chessa had joined her.

She listened to her daughter's voice, saw the drawing again, looked it from the angle prescribed by Zero… and couldn't fathom DG's need to leave. Until her cool lavender stare grazed across her old friend.

"Ambrose," she said, "do you think this permissible behaviour for a princess, or for you? I would be glad to send out a team of capable knights, from our very own staff, who would—"

"Please, Mother," intervened DG, embarrassed on her behalf. "This is a family matter. I think we should treat it like one. Besides, I know how to ride—pretty well—and I know what I'm going for. Most importantly," she glanced at Glitch, reaching to his elbow; he looked bewildered, but illuminated; hopeful, but pessimistic, "I have the motivation to do this as quickly as I can."

She was near relenting, already feeling the concern rising in her marrow, but disintegrating into the fright of a parent. DG had made a valid point. Family matters ought to be kept close. Ambrose was better than family, more to her than a brother, too dear to be a cousin, but he was such an extension of their daily activity, even with his extended absences, his life in Issilthrush with Wyatt Cain, that she saw no way but to give in to the ageless lament surging through marrow and veins. "I have a condition, DG."

"A condition? Mother, this isn't about bargaining. I'm capable of going, whether or not you give me your blessing, and at least five hundred plat for expenses… What's your condition?"

By then, Chessa was indicated, and DG had a sinking feeling. Not quite in her marrow, somewhere deeper, graver.

"I will not let you leave this house until you and Chessa are married."

DG exhaled, flapping her lips. Chessa's astonishment was an ill-timed yip, quickly covered by her hand: the apology muffled but delivered. Wyatt shoved his hands into his pockets, tense, attempting disinterest. Glitch looked among them. DG, marrying Chessa… He knew they should've thought of the solution ages before, so simplistic, so endearingly involved, so deliciously deceitful—but it would make DG married—married. The strangeness could not be swabbed from him. While they hesitated, he spoke.

"Fine, your Majesty."

She was startled to hear him, having heard so little from him in the last fortnight.

"It's fine," DG repeated. Her tilt towards Mother threatened in its impertinence. "Is tonight too soon?"

"Do be serious, DG."

"I want to leave tomorrow, so it'll have to be tonight. The sooner we go, the sooner I can come back… Mother, you don't realise the importance of this spell! Think of all the headcases around the realm that might be suffering the same way as poor Glitch! If the O.Z. has the power to remove half their brains, squish all that information into one side of their most important organ, that makes them who they are—and if the O.Z. can do that, and put them back together again, if a little bit broken—then we, Mother, as witches from a line of witches, wielding power that is capable of great darkness and tremendous light—then we have the ability to _make_ these people well again! How would you like it if you had an evil twin running all over the place, making you do things you don't want to do?"

"That is enough, DG!"

"No, I don't know if it is!"

Glitch gestured to her. "No, DG, sweets, it really is enough."

At this urging, DG leaned back, exhaling slowly, till reconnected with herself. "Tonight, Mother, please, if you're going to keep this ultimatum of yours."

At length, the queen consented, wishing that her ring of suitors were about her, so that they might look duly exasperated, and muffle their reproach of the rebellious baby princess in the silent upshot. "All right, tonight, since you have allowed your stubbornness too much influence over your character." But her expression turned shrewd, impressed by DG's cunning, her daring, her willingness not to negotiate. The earmarks of a monarch. Intentionally, she observed Chessa Cain's reaction, and saw the girl pale, subdued. If not aware of DG's impetuous nature, Chessa would soon know it, quite thoroughly. "A private ceremony for the contractual validation, and we will worry about a proper promulgation to the public at a later date, perhaps followed, with any luck, by a proper wedding."

A lump seized Glitch's throat. How he ached inside to grab Wyatt's hand, for the puissance of his spouse to inculcate him. DG, weddings, contract signatures, a hall full of guests, DG frilled in fabrics and ruffles, lost in the fluff of a dress, and lost, in a way, to them. And so willing a bride, it struck him then, too. So willing to enter into it with uncommon celerity, have it done with, so she might instigate the adventure waiting. The cottage of bone on the ruins of a witch's home.

Then, without ado, even as she bowed her head, they were dismissed. "I have a lot of work that must be done, now. DG, I will call upon you later."

This was all the kindness DG expected. It was enough. Mother's displeasure enervated rather than vexed. It would've been more awful, DG reflected aloud as they stepped into the corridor, if Mother hadn't been annoyed. "If she had been impassive and hadn't fought me so much," she sighed, arm linked with Glitch's, but glad for the presence of Chessa and Wyatt, "it would've shown me exactly how determined she is to see me married, after all. I hadn't thought it possible. She's more disturbed by Azkadellia wanting to marry Zero than she is about me marrying a Cain."

Wyatt grunted, about to say something until Chessa quieted him by a faint touch. It was one couple looked upon unfavourably by more than Ahamo and the Queen.


	9. Chapter 9

XL.

A dinner, far more grand than ever a dinner was, even with company, commemorated the first espousal of royals since the Queen chose to marry a Slipper, thirty-four annuals ago. Though her family and friends showed a courteous happiness for her, expressed in wishes and kisses, DG's unsettled mood seemed to unfetter the gathered. Glitch's long face tormented her. Wyatt did not skulk, despite being at the same table with Zero, removed to the table's far corner. His thoughts, like DG's, were on upcoming travel. The best time to leave, hoping they escaped rain, hoping they made it to the secret ruins of bone before winter came. His infrequent glances to DG secured his belief that she had done, as she usually did, the right thing. And Chessa, the secret-keeper, had cultivated it, through whimsy and intelligence.

The end of the meal found DG's leer wandering to Azkadellia and Zero. Purposefully, they had been set apart, Azkadellia by Mother, Zero naturally moved towards Ahamo, sitting at the opposite end. No furtive looks passed between them, nothing that would indicate the spoils of romance. The knife and fork crashed on her plate. If they weren't in love, then why did they want to marry? She caught Chessa taking a sip of water, and deftly called herself a hypocrite, to be angry at her sister, at Zero, when she had done what they wished. More than ever, she failed to understand the reason behind her parents' abhorrence. It was Azkadellia's life, and Zero's. Why let their youngest daughter marry no one of rank and title, when Azkadellia couldn't marry an old friend of her father's? She'd tensed so much, walking through veil after veil of postulations, that her mouth tightened, her brow furrowed, and when someone made too loud a noise, she jumped.

The night would be a long one, without the usual gathering in the music room. DG headed for her chamber of snowflakes, a little while later remembering, by the blatant arrival of Chessa, that the ruse had to begin somewhere, that night, right then.

Chessa changed into an odd assortment of sleepwear. Often enough, she'd spent Sunday nights at the Issilthrush cottage of her uncles, with DG present, and her plaid menswear wasn't a surprise.

"This isn't so awful," DG said, Chessa settled into the sheet and thin blanket. The little book, the latest road atlas, was sampled again. "Not that I supposed it would be. At least I know you don't snore."

DG's hands moved the sheaves, one after another. Something fuddled Chessa, something missing. "I should've bought you a ring… Even Uncle Wyatt has a ring. To be given in friendship if nothing else. What do you like? Gold, silver? A combination of?"

The smile, timid and tired, hooked at DG's mouth, pleased Chessa. The scents of serenity would always flow between them. Chessa was so inviting, without saying a word, that DG closed the little book of little maps, set it aside, and hunkered on her side, facing her bride.

"No one's ever asked me that. I have a pin that Wyatt and Glitch bought me last year… A ring that Mother and Dad gave me, an heirloom. I'm too terrified of losing it that I've never taken it from the box." That thin stream of molten gold had slipped again across Chessa's shoulder, and again DG hid it. A fingertip lingered, of its own accord, atop the jaw line, down to the chin. Before then, DG considered Chessa's affection sororal; she never considered that Chessa might love her. But as soon as the sweet song occurred, it departed.

"Any time you want to sneak away," said Chessa, snuggling into the satiny white pillowcase, "you just go ahead and go."

"Sneak away? Oh. No. Not tonight. We're all to get up too damn early for any sort of activity that might keep us awake. You should sleep, too, since you're coming." Just when she believed Chessa's drowsiness might lead to sleep, Chessa lids lifted, and she asked for one of the little map books.

"There's no reason you should be the only one, other than Uncle, that has any idea of where we're going." Pillows were piled at her back. The lamp on her bedside cabinet ignited, with the wave of DG's hand, an act Chessa never tired of seeing. She pulled on red-rimmed reading glasses, then glided her way through the table of contents. "County Nayne… It's so far. Uncle Wyatt was right to voice worries we won't make it out of there before the weather turns cold."

"I'm less concerned with the weather," DG said, "and more concerned with Glitch."

"You think Ambrose will come back?"

It wasn't her fault, DG thought, that she was pessimistic. She stared at Chessa so long that the answer wove into the silence, and when she looked away, guilt smote her. "Ambrose isn't gone. Sometimes I wonder if he ever left. I don't know how he heard about this spelled, as Ambrose or as Glitch, and maybe we'll never know… But if it exists, we'll find it. We can save more than him… We can save all of them." The enormity of her guile mixed with an unpleasantness, but she snapped from it, and instructed Chessa. "Find us another route through Andlermiel, along the Passapette River. Here." Pointing to it helped Chessa, who then grabbed DG's travel diary, preparing to indite significant adversaria to help get them through the north-western mountains, rugged, scathing—and, as Chessa believed and DG came to believe, exquisitely beautiful. Admiration for Andlermiel and County Nayne was effortlessly experienced by them, their mutual love for Issilthrush at the base of it.

-x-

XLI.

For breakfast, the unexpected occurred when Jeb sauntered into the room on the tailcoats of Vy-Sor. DG was too astounded to see him again, after so long, that stillness overcame her, until he provoked her into a handshake after a bow. He planned to journey with them, if they would take him. Among his travels during the war was Nayne, and while he remembered it only in minor ways, the details remembered from a dream, his keenness to be admitted to the party was significant.

"He is my stepfather," he told DG, when Wyatt had left with Glitch to see about the horses. "I owe it to him, for looking after Father, teaching him, and me, that hearts do heal. Only, some more swiftly than others. You have married, so the little voices of Central City tell me."

"How rise the family secrets," grumbled DG. "You cannot sass me about it, Jeb, as we're now cousins—once removed, or however that works. Make yourself useful, Cousin, and go help your father saddle the horses."

But she followed him rather than led him out of the breakfast nook, into the awaiting side foyer. There, at hallway's end, foyer's beginning, sunlight streaming through the decoratively latticed windows, Jeb halted, and DG saw that Azkadellia, striding across the mosaic tiles, and Zero, at her elbow, had captured his attention. When she thought he'd explode, or she would, if one of them didn't say something, he spoke, quietly, but dishevelled in spirit beneath dismayed blue eyes.

"A little voice came down from atop this hill, and told me, too, about them."

"They've been thwarted," DG responded. "Some hearts will not be repositioned, and Azkadellia's is one of them."

"I wouldn't think she'd marry him for love," and with that, Jeb went on with what he knew. He lived far from the circumference of the palace, its activities and inmates, and yet his knowledge exceeded that of the princess. "She'd marry him to protect herself, to marry him and never have to marry again. Her wish would come true, if she had a wish like that, and if Zero had a choice like that. But it would be all right," Jeb nodded knowingly at her, "if she married him, as much as I dislike him. My mother's death might have been quick, and in the quickness a mercy. But his death, unless the avenue before him changes, will be slow and torturous." He turned back to her, the creature of darkness and revenge shadowing his features. "I couldn't have planned a more justified end to that man. But if it pains your sister, and pains you through her, then I am sorry."

Dispersing before DG were a million different avenues of the future. One flipped her to the recent past, a week ago, when Zero had looked unalterably ill. "He's dying…? You know this, and he won't tell any of us?"

"I'm sure the Prince knows. It is why he forbade their engagement."

She grasped for the indifferent sensations. "What a little gossip mongrel you've been, Mr Cain."

"I listen to protect Father. He is too close to you, sometimes, that he forgets that politics lurk around you. You have no political aspirations yourself, but he is a marshal, and these things should be considered. Have I really told you anything you didn't already know, or even suspected?"

Suspected, perhaps she had suspected. Now it was different—to know and have no chance of knowledge being overthrown. She wanted to run and throw comforting arms around Azkadellia, to tell her it'd be all right, and then, if she could, find out why.

"Why?" she suddenly asked of Jeb, as though he wasn't there. "Why marry Zero, if he's so ill that he'll leave her?"

"The world respects a rich widow, Princess. If he's gone, she'll be free, and never will have to marry again."

But why was Azkadellia so afraid to marry? DG shuffled on, donning a lightweight gentleman's jacket to protect against urban wind. Thinking as she meandered the paths to the stable, the huddle of companions in bright colours and intense expressions, she understood her own faults. The worst of which was how little she knew her own sister. In a small, unnoticed observance, DG witnessed Glitch and Wyatt, working to ready Andromeda, the seal mare, with a quickness and doggedness of their symbiosis. They had a union of strength, and chemistry that pervaded all, and made no one doubt their love for one another.

For the first time, DG watched them as an outsider, one forlorn and cold, looking in through a foggy window, to love and light, companionship and family, locked away from her. She loved them, ached to love them more than her mind and body could handle, but she had walked away from home too often, far too often, to be with them.

And once more, once more out into the world, to help Glitch.

He would scour the ends of the earth, from haven to cove to volcano, to find what medicine or spell she needed. Poised at the threshold of departure, DG's feet were hindered. A pressure in her chest, a drop in her stomach, threatened to release tears. If they flew from her eyes as sobs flew from her throat, they would know… The terrible, terrible things they would know.

If she hadn't then seen a new figure emerged from the blackness of the barn's interior, DG might have collapsed and cried, her might and mien obliterated.

It would've happened,  
If she hadn't seen Raw just then.

"This," Raw said, his embrace prolonged, reluctantly ended, "was not to be missed. Marriage of our princess," he nodded at her, then to the ensemble on horseback, "and beginnings of new adventure." He touched her chin, making her feel whole again. Her fears were childish, simple, stupid, silly things that she wouldn't remember in six months, or in six hours, if she matured enough. She would be too busy navigating the fields and fens, leading them closer and closer to the Andlermiel, to the Passapette.

DG grinned at him, clamping his shoulder for a final touch before scurrying to her readied horse. The stableman held the leads. She took them, swung into the saddle, and, just as Wyatt clicked his tongue for all the horses to go—

DG felt a terrible weightlessness.  
As the horse's legs settled,  
DG's body struck the ground.

-x-

XLII.

An arm was broken, an ankle twisted. The injuries put from her mind any chance of adventure. "I'm sorry, Glitch," she told him, holding his hand across the bedcovers. Her snowflake room glowed brilliantly in the afternoon light. The apart shutters caught the series of glass beads and wire strands hanging from hooks above the panes. Ripples of prisms fell over the room. Mother had just left, taking Azkadellia, leaving Raw, Glitch, and Chessa. Wyatt had left earlier, before anyone else, taking Jeb with him. The quiet place assured DG of her decision. She wanted them to go without her.

"Wyatt already knows that this is what I want you guys to do," DG interrupted Glitch's protests. "That's why he left. It isn't that he can't look at me, all bruised," her hand hovered over the contusion at her cheek, "but he doesn't want to hear me try arguing with him about this."

"Giving in before he fights," responded Glitch, testing the limits of his humour by smirking. "That doesn't sound like him. We're out of sorts… The unexpected always does that to us."

"Just go, please? I don't want you delayed by waiting around for me. The healers say it'll be a couple of weeks. Wyatt always worried we wouldn't get to Andlermiel before the first snowflakes. Wait two more weeks, and we'll not only get a few snowflakes, but probably a blizzard."

Glitch gripped her hand tighter, nodding, nodding, as if it would delay the reaction. But she wasn't to go with them. "Some things are bigger than us," he hated to mention fate, "and sometimes it has to be obeyed. I find it captious, disagreeable, and I hate it. Go?" He nodded again, squeezing her hand, bringing it momentarily to his lips. His DG, the one who had brought him back from wandering in the first place. There, on her dresser, catching sunlight, rested the lily sculpted from elite Southern Glass craftsmen. He'd sent it to her, and it bloomed forever, in proportion to his love. "Go… Yes, I'll talk to him. I'll tell him we're still going. What about—?" He tilted his head to the figure lurking behind, all pale with fright and wide-eyed.

"Chessa goes," DG said, no preamble required.

"DG—"

"You're going, Chessa!"

The ensuing glare, distended and gravelled, fell in DG's favour.

"Why do you think we stayed up until the wee-smalls poring over maps and travel booklets? Just in case something like this happened." Her head suddenly weighed heavier than ever it had. A hand retreated to her forehead. "The two of you had better go. The elixir's beginning to kick in, and I'm feeling swoony and docile."

Glitch chuckled at the irony of it. "You, docile," he pecked her cheek, hovering, "only when—well, never mind when. It isn't right to speak of such things in front of your wife. Frightfully rude of me." But he urged her face upward to kiss her mouth, then, smiling wanly, drifted from the blue and silver place.

With her hands at her waist, a storm in her eyes, Chessa left her inner conflict unspoken.

"Just promise you'll write me updates, letters, telegrams," DG told her, sad and so hurt by the event that it overshadowed the pain of an arm broken, "and look out for them. If Wyatt gives you a gun, take it… If you want to shoot someone, do it. Just—don't shoot Jeb, no matter how much he might make you angry."

Her look swarmed with unfinished protestations. But she swivelled it, hailing Chessa, and grabbed the coat lapel to pull her down. For a moment, Chessa's hands covered hers, then the cease of struggling when their lips met. Only lips, no feeling but shock behind it. And, alarmed, Chessa tried to clear away. DG thought she might let her go, put an end to the disaster, faintly realising it was not as deplorable as supposed. To experiment, she tugged gently at Chessa's coat: she sunk back and Chessa leaned in, seeking balance support on DG's shoulders. Mere lips turned to mouths, to the warmth and softness within. A little bit of love lit a tingle of lust in DG's core. Noticing it, she lifted from the headiness and inhaled different air of a world that might have imperceptibly changed. Its energy was charged from a second ago.

The stultified Chessa slowly opened her eyes. A bewildered and speculative look met her. DG, struggling to understand why she had done that, and Chessa able to summarise, not glibly, but a retaliatory reaction never should be glib, if given by a Cain.

"If you ever do that again," warned she, blue irises shining silver with indignation, "you had better be a little more prepared for some decent follow-through." She left a space for an apology that never arrived.

DG angled over, showing Chessa her back, and called over her shoulder. "Stay safe, and keep to the routes we chose."

Chessa began buttoning her coat, began leaving the room, already at the tip of a tongue still afire, a blasting, sardonic retort. "I'll be sure to do that—Princess Cain."

After the door closed softly, DG snorted.

-x-

XLIII.

At the doorway into the courtyard, overrun then with noisy insects and chirruping birds, DG, with her relatives, her friends, watched the party of hopeful travellers depart. They passed the gates, into the winding city roads, swiftly gone from sight.

"They will be all right."

The placation didn't come from her father, mother, sister, but from the direction of Zero. He had, more than the others, understood DG's afflictions. She had been on the point of going with them, and was now obliged to stay, to bear time away in needless activities, in idleness. Being infirm and restless, Zero noted, had no place coursing its way through the blood of a royal, or a friend to one. He would've have gone, if he could breathe without pain, and look into the eyes of both Cains without finding brilliant sheets of vengeful thoughts, anguish, hatred.

Come midnight, or just past it, DG woke in tremendous agony. Tears and sobs had ripped her from slumber. Wyatt and Glitch and Chessa and Raw—they were gone, to rove the fields and clamour over roads that bore them to unknown realms, farther and farther than ever she had been.

And she was left alone to deal with the remorse their absence brought.

And the frustrations her injury had angrily cultivated.

She rose from bed, wandered the halls, till finding the Old Room. Forever had it held that title, in her mind, in Azkadellia's; if another name was attributed to it, the name was hidden. A lantern on the mantle was lit, a wave of her hand bringing light and shadow to the room. It was stuffed with bookshelves, oddities, legends of taxidermy in the shape of creatures she'd forgotten. All of her ancestors' goods, of witchery, of experimentation, were crammed and nestled into the Old Room. A dusty piano. A harp without strings that was never played. Among this miscellany, tucked imperceptibly wherever a nook permitted it, were hampers, baskets, boxes, crates of books.

If a darling princess, the baby girl of a queen and a consort, had ever lost a book, and if that book were to ever be found again, it would be in this catacomb of memorabilia.

She set the lamp by her feet.

She slipped her feet beneath her, careful with the twist, babying her arm.

Sitting, gazing at tall shadows cast by the light. The dead animals seemed to touch on life, then, and DG held her breath, waiting for them to move. But they watched on from their frozen state.

She pulled the first crate towards her. A grimy plume lifted.

With limited mobility, it would take hours to sort through the dregs, the debris.

A strange creature, four legs, fangs, round ears, a mammal of water, was regarded with the faintest hint of exasperation.

"You could get off your lazy stuffed ass and help, you know."

It snarled back at her.


	10. Chapter 10

**VOLUME 4  
The Journey**

XLIV.

It was a journey of four days, by horseback, on good roads laid by the industrious hands of time. Chessa supplied herself with knowledge of every area they entered. Wyatt remained vastly observant. He wanted to navigate around towns rather than through them. Less trouble that way, he said. It was more trouble, Glitch argued, with Chessa backing him up, to go round towns than through them. Still, Wyatt's adamancy outweighed their wit. He wanted something else, too: a chance to meet with fate in places where she most commonly dwelt. One is far more inclined to meet fate on a new, untaken path than to see her blinking eyes and smiling face a place seen a hundred times before. So they wandered and created ambagious, torturous alleys among trees and underbrush. They escaped villages, towns, and the hamlets always at the foot of mountains.

Glitch infrequently spoke, but as the day wore on his frustration waned, loosening his tongue in proportion to his spirit. By twilight, when they were prepared to camp for the night, he had talked Raw's ear off. The former viewer was often touching his ear, sidling from Glitch across logs, and finally rolled beneath the blanket with his back to them. Chessa warmly chortled. Jeb raised his eyebrows. Glitch fixed himself on Wyatt. Wyatt had the heart and patience, after so many annuals of practice, to listen. He had a certain curiosity, too, to know where Ambrose was inside his beloved Glitch.

On the second day of their journey, the complications began to arise. Riders from the high plains, deep in the western mountains, made their pilgrimage to the towns cut into the stones. While in the lower strands, they made their rounds, selling wares and goods.

"DG must've forgotten to mention this," Glitch said, quite composed despite steering his steed through an enormity of people. The crowds were thick, the voices strong, the din loudest since their backs were upon Central City.

Chessa nervously sorted through DG's leather-bound journal, searching, searching… "I'm sure she must have known about it."

"A good joke on her behalf, then," said Jeb, feeling querulous and indifferent to derisive retaliation. He had no troubles with Princess DG, though he didn't understand her motives, her wants from life. She was so different: a stranger from the Other Side, bound to her people, fighting for them, once, rather than watch the city she didn't remember, a realm she couldn't recall, cave under despair, and fall into ruin. He was thinking such things, when chaos abandoned its shell and scurried freely into the dell.

A loud and long bang of a shotgun emptied the streets of sound. From it, panic cursed the horses, riders on them or no. They fled in one direction, a stampede with a series of frightened leaders. Jeb shouted to Chessa to hold on. He held tight the reins, the sides of the horse with his knees. He looked up to find his father and Glitch in a flow opposite his. Down the slope of the road they went, the dots vanishing in a sea of swarming colour and facsimiles. Through some miracle, he was still nearest his cousin. They had lost all control of their beasts, and yet clung on. Amid the tumult rang cries of crushed pedestrians, new orphans, and the beat of four hundred hooves.

When the madness ended, Jeb and Chessa were removed from the village by five spans. People wailed and sobbed around them, injured and frightened.

"This is an inauspicious beginning," Jeb said. "You stay, if you want. Help them. I'll walk back to town and see if I can find Father and Glitch."

Stultified, Chessa nodded. She saw him leave on foot, the constabulary and marshals disallowing horses back into the city. Whirling around, the damage before her whelmed. She whinged, folded her arms. "How am I supposed to explain this to DG?" she wondered, murmuring it aloud.

Jeb came back, downtrodden, sluggish. He'd found no trace of them. They would have to go to the other side of the village, going the long way round it, to find Father and Glitch. "Marshals spoke of an encampment of some injured there." His stoic face brought an example of feigned Cain courage. "I looked among the dead, and found neither of them. Our favours at this time must be small, but we will take them as they are."

The light of the day faded into widespread gloaming, with birds and a chorus of winter-weakened insects native to the western foothills. The path was arduous, across many plank bridges and before many empty farmhouses. The road took them through a sweeping field, hills upon hills into the thickened haze at the horizon. Here, Jeb was called, through some power, to lift his gaze. Perched on a fence post, a crow. It cackled, like laughter. He didn't immediately think of Mother Kooky, the card-reading anchorite who shape-shifted and told the future in riddles, among the litany of her exhibited talents.

But Chessa thought of her.

As she went by the crow, she mumbled the name. The syllables ricocheted off the increasing mist, coming back to her, and back to her, and back to her again.

For a moment, Chessa was bound to look behind her.

A woman sprang from black, pinguid feathers.

She sprung out of them, a witch from a black void.

But she sprung away too soon. Swallowed by the slips of fog rushing from the base of the mountain. Like a curtain to birds, insects, whispers of a forgotten voice, twilight was done, and night came. Its Cimmerian wings swallowed the world, cloud by cloud. Shadows deepened and folded them into their speechless cold.

Wrapped in coat and cloak, she'd forgotten the frigidity of mountain nights. Summer and autumn, too often interchangeable.

DG was right. A journey of four days meant a chance of treachery, peril, snow and ice, stampedes and separation.

"Not that I'll tell her she was right," Chessa mused.

"What's that?" Jeb queried. He was not in the mood for conversation. But his cousin's temperament suited. A balance of the simple, the ordinary, the everyday.

"The wife," she threw contention into the noun, turning it from something small into a long, winding phrase. "I won't tell her she was right. About how soon we should leave. That it might take weeks to journey there, journey back. It's six hundred and something spans from the palace…"

She couldn't think about that. Distance. The lack of nearness. She was a homebody. Travel and adventure were not her activities of choice. It had taken her weeks and weeks of Uncle Wyatt's benighted pleas, and Glitch's enthusiastic chirruping, for Chessa to accept the road to Central City.

Jeb kept his regard on a bend in the road ahead. Moonlight and starlight filtered through the fog to spill across the barren place, and all around the lighted path, shadows grappled and made striations variant.

"It is always best, in my limited experience when dealing with Princess DG, to never tell her when she is right. And we should encourage her to be as wrong as often as possible." Thinking of what she had to deal with—his father, Glitch, Azkadellia, parents who feared her and loved her, and a radiant assortment of friends, a brilliant assortment of talents—Jeb gave a shake of his head. "Poor Princess DG. What is it you call her? I heard it earlier. An epithet."

Chessa stiffed her lip. This marriage business had its bits of chicanery: one minute content, filling her with the good she had done, the saving of DG, the perpetuating of her relationship with Wyatt and Glitch; and another moment the goodness dismembered, becoming naught but an embarrassment. "Princess Cain."

He didn't know why, but he laughed again.

Her humiliation unfolded.

They walked on, meeting the bend in the road Jeb espied earlier. Coming upon it, the ground was inspected, in a patch of mud in a divot, for footprints, human or equine. Finding none, they ventured to mount and ride through the country. Chessa's compass told her which direction lay the town.

"Let's hope we find Raw, Uncle, and Glitch at the end of this long road."

A long road it was. Many more stretched before them, to the Passapette River, to Andlermiel.

At the acrid smoke catching their noses, they followed the stench to a fire pit etched into the softened earth. Logs kicked frolicking flames into the air, sparks that turned to cinders. In the orange light lay a content hirsute gentleman. Straight was his back against a trunk, his ankles lifted and crossed upon a nearby rotting stump. In addition to the smoke from the fire, a length of it puffed from the bowl of his pipe. He turned to see them, waved the pipe and a half-circle. It hailed them and greeted them.

"Thought the fire would draw them," Raw's roughened, low voice poured into the established threnody of night. He encouraged them to sit, to wait. He had some food, offering to share. He had a feast, compared to the emptiness of their bags.

"I see you're are a better hunter than you are prey, Raw," complimented Jeb. The rabbit was roasted, cooled, and spiced with a tangy berry sauce. "You've learned much since I saw you last."

"One mustn't tire of knowledge's journey," came the sagacious reply. He leaned into his seat, taking a plentiful draw from his pipe. His eyes closed, a ring of smoke spooling from his teeth. "Very tiring day. Full of tiring emotions. Very draining. Rest awhile." He refrained from calling them kids, little ones, young as they seemed to him. Jeb without a wrinkle in his eye, but all the intensity of his haunted annuals lodged in him, showing experience to those, like Raw, who knew what to look for. And Chessa, bountiful in expressions, limited in talents, but her admirable capacity to love overcame lesser fears. Those fears of hers he didn't know, could contemplate, only didn't care to. Her privacy remained intact.

She ate, tried to relax. At her fill of rabbit and fruit, she settled into her blankets, drawn nearer the fire's light. From her pack she found her own pipe, lit it, and, in this state of relaxation, penned of the day's harrows and frights in the journal. Jeb slept, his ability to trick himself into sleeping one of the talents she recalled when they were younglings, ugly cygnets riding on the wings of their parents, straight into the Resistance, when their proper age came. She woke him, finished with her scribbles, and tried to sleep while he kept watch.

But he waited many hours for any sign of Father or Glitch.

He would not be surprised if Glitch should not show,  
If Ambrose would instead.

-x-

XLV.

Irreversible agony inflicted Wyatt. The pain lay stationary in his sleep. Upon waking, it came to life. Discordant serrations, hideous reverberations, slipping through his limbs, to extremities. Fingertips and toes burned, too hot or too cold. Gone was his ability to decipher. His flesh turned to liquid. He melted. He solidified. He didn't know what he was but still alive. Not yet dead. Ambrose would not want that.

He'd gone down the road behind Glitch.

Glitch as he'd been then, so it seemed. But looking back on it, Wyatt was unsure. So small was the delineation, at times, between the endings of Glitch and the beginnings of Ambrose. Demarcation of Ambrose were lessons Glitch had taught, had taught them unwell, not too thoroughly, without zeal or want.

Wyatt had gone down the road behind Glitch.

And Glitch's silhouette waited. Beneath the boughs and limbs of conifers and oaks. Held there as a shadow stolen from a plate of the moon. A slant of a man in evening gloom. They had lost everyone else. Raw, Jeb, Chessa… Wyatt had wanted, more than anything, to stay with Glitch.

In a confabulation with his own reason, lodged so expertly in his own reason, Wyatt had assumed Glitch was as terrified of the stampede as he, Wyatt, had pretended.

Something about it niggled at the back of his brain. Pecking there for answers that wouldn't be rustled. Something in the situation was wrong.

But he'd chased after Glitch, blind with want. They had lost their horses. Somewhere in the fray, Wyatt tossed from his bay and Glitch out of his sight before seeing what became of the mare he'd ridden.

So he chased on foot, neared the silhouette, and took it right at the neck. Whatever it had been. Suspicions indicated a branch of weight, of controllable length. He was tossed again, lost his legs, hit the ground. Hot stuff filled his mouth, his ear, knocking out taste and sound.

Now, in the present, tied to a tree, he wrestled eyelids open by will rather than strength. Every vertical stretch of darkness seemed to mimic Ambrose, until the slow wind gave a low, hoarse groan through bracken and rushes, through leaves and underbrush, leaving tree trunks still but a man, one man, moving. His pale face caught the moonlight, starlight, and threw it off again. Pits of darkness dim and dull to mask his brilliant brown eyes. The life in them was different. He was too much Ambrose, not enough Glitch.

"They should document it," Ambrose said, one step for a word, closer to Wyatt.

"Document what?" Wyatt struggled. The bonds were hopeless to unknot.

Ambrose saw the effort, clicking his tongue and shaking his head. "No, no… I tied those myself. All of them. Every knot. You'd better not try. You'd have better luck trying to fly. If the crow people come round, well, then you can learn something new. Document what? What? Oh, insanity, of course. Headcases gone to Splitheads. What a sick name. Isn't it a sick name? Headcases, one can get used to that word." He stared into space and fitted mellowness into his tone, experiencing it in his mind. So inwardly spoiled, twisted chaplets of mould, but outwardly so calm. Then insanity showed itself, a burst of energy, a crackling laugh, a grin made all the more despicable by its emptiness. "But Splitheads! Splitheads! Splitheads! I would prefer another term, wouldn't you? Bisector—now bisector! That would work! A noun of us, split in two, rent down the middle of us, the new, the old—one plus one is two."

The branch used to maul Wyatt twirled around in Ambrose's hands. Behind his shoulders, across them, horizontal, with his wrists hanging over.

"Do you know, Wyatt, I suppose I gave them that name. Wretched thought, isn't it?" He sighed, pathetically examining the man he knew as his spouse. "What am I going to do with you? You would have me bring back Glitch. But he was weak. Like you are, at the sight of him."

"I love Glitch," Wyatt said, "and I hate you."

Ambrose smirked, head titled forward, shaking in the hypocrisy. "That simply won't do. I love Glitch, too, of course. It's rather necessary given the situation. He was, as far as lovers go," and now he waxed philosophical, gazing into the stars far above the treetops, "needy and whiny, grabby—and he never knew when it was time to let go! Why can't people just let go!"

He darted his glare to Wyatt, searching for the answer before the question.

"Why can't you let him go?"

Wyatt chose his answer carefully. Perhaps the better parts of Glitch were gone, and Glitch had allowed Ambrose too much freedom, a reign over him. He carried a white flag and pitched it to the skies, without ever telling Wyatt what he had done, without a hint as to how this would end. He should've asked more questions of Glitch. Glitch should've provided answers more thorough than those yielding unknowns, the variables that couldn't be expounded.

Love… Love wasn't an object to be let go…

"One holds tight to it…" As tight as the binds that held him to the tree, to Ambrose's unwanted company. He wrenched his arms and legs again, to no avail, but to a pain increased where burns ached and rents of skin began. "One holds tight to it, never lets go. Even when it's all wrong, if it seems all wrong, if it's all gone sideways."

Ambrose knew what Wyatt was doing. "Such cunning, such craft. How mesmerising to see it in you, Wyatt Cain, my formidable spouse!" He smirked, almost pleasantly.

Then it came round again, swung from its perch at his shoulders, the branch. It met with Wyatt's midsection. He saw waves crash on rocky shores, water that rose so high to touch the suns and evaporate there. Thunder roared, every storm passing inside his head. It rained and rained, lightning flashed, every storm passing inside his head. The buzzing din only quit when enough had been had.

Ambrose huffed at Wyatt's lack of consciousness. He dropped the branch, finished the distance between them, and patted the waxy cheek. "You're a stupid fool. You love too much or you don't love enough. When are you going to learn that? I'd dread being here in the morning, Wyatt, so I am leaving. You can't find the witch anyhow. If you tried you couldn't find her. You would have me destroyed forever. I can't have that. What good am I to the world if I'm Glitch, with half a brain? I'd have a better life, with more fulfilment, if you stuck me up on a post like that scarecrow out there, shoved me full of bracken and thistle, and left me to the crows! Sick… Sick… So sick."

When he turned away, Ambrose had already forgotten what he'd done.


	11. Chapter 11

XLVI.

A scurrying over leaves.

A scent of rotten cranberries. These sensations and more lifted Raw fresh from the slumberous darkness. Perched on his knee, a fabulous plumed creature, grey with streaks of auburn, with tufted, triangular ears, fat furry paws with elongated claws, to climb trees, break casements of favourite eats. Small enough to sit where he was comfortably. Out of his jaw fell a krennut, into Raw's waiting palm.

"Thank you, my friend. Bring us news?"

Streaks of knowledge were legible on the back of the creature's eyes. Aware that the information had been passed, the creature forged a new roost on Raw's shoulder. The viewer rounded himself from the bedroll, glaring at the ground where his two companions lay. So much joy watching friends rest, so little joy in waking them to hustle along an unknown journey. But he tapped Jeb with his toe, woke Chessa with a touch of his hand at the top of her golden crown. When they had flung away the unwanted remains of dreams, he told them what he had learned. Jeb's doubting regard left Raw in little doubt of his own talent.

"Creatures are not greater than us, but we are equals here. We know what they cannot, and they know what we cannot. Hurry!" He waved and flapped his hands. "Hurry! We must go!" In the east, glimmers of green and silver shovelled through the masking clouds. Dawn was on its way, whether or not they wanted it to be. They had already lost a day.

Chessa rolled her bed in silence, feeling as pale and blank as the slate of morning allowed. Odd it was, in all her images of this adventure, not to have the fun she intended with DG, not to laugh with her, with Uncle Wyatt, companionable Glitch there to smooth them if they became too serious too soon. She had Raw at her back, and Jeb at her side. But she knew them so vaguely. Raw spent most of his time holed away, a hermit of the woods beyond the outer rim of Issilthrush. He came for holidays, birthdays, celebrations of various kinds; he came for harvest, for apple-picking, to clear away the pumpkin patch when the breath of snow began to threaten. For all of this, she knew him hardly at all. Jeb was remembered best galloping across the hayfield of Mirrewuine, blond as the suns and straw, quiet, industrious. Who was this stranger before her? She didn't know him better now than then.

"We must go this way." Raw led the way, loosening the reins of their horses from knots in the brambles. They walked their horses at first, holding silent their tongues to let the morning filter work. Raw let them be still. He wished, too, what they wished. That they hadn't made mistakes, too many so far. They had let Glitch and Wyatt out of their sight. But largest of the errors he couldn't see, he could only feel: They hadn't travelled with a witch. At home, they had left DG. It shouldn't have been done. A journey to a witch's home without a witch, a situation determined to bring trouble. He sensed the fastenings of this adventure beginning to unwind. And what was lodged within the creature on his shoulder was not knowledge housed in the mind, but fear—the worst of it held in the heart.

The road swung back from fields to woods, through a series of undulations topped with tors, its sides dripping with sweet clover, dandelions, and grasses dense and almost unnaturally green.

Then they were in the woods again, a still place much more alive than the deadness they sensed at its newer, fresher end. Too many times to count did Chessa let her hand reach for the hilt of a knife sheathed at her side. All at once she'd feel combustible from the forest's intensity, then it would fade, like a waning moon, and she would forget where they were and earlier beliefs that they should have left that path to spirits dead rather than spirits living.

The Ternbitt so long clinging to Raw dashed off, spontaneously, for the nearest tree. Raw went on, ignoring the departure. He sensed a foulness in the place. It didn't come from the trees, from the earth, but the general proximity of the forest had been breached, the borders of it wrenched, kinked, broken, snapped.

He turned, fidgeting, looking between Jeb and Chessa.

"We—too late."

Jeb unfolded the rifle from his back, but had no enemy to aim towards. He sighed, then slinked downwards from shoulders to head. He massaged away a pain lodged behind his brow. "Too late…"

The hurt in Chessa tried to transform her turbid, begrimed insides to petrous indifference. She fought and dug in to the pain. Breaths quickened, rising in speed with the heat of surfacing tears. "Too late… It's Ambrose… Ambrose has come back, and we are—we are too late."

Raw was at a loss. The decision must be theirs. After Jeb had postulated the bad, evil, decent and good that might come from each side of choice, he nodded, took up the rifle, and pressed on.

"If Ambrose has gone on to seek the witch himself and destroy her, then we'll let him. But I must find Father."

And when they found him, tied still to the rotund old willow tree at the rim of a gulch streaming with snowmelt, lucidity was not profound.

Though his murmurings, as he was freed, slipping to the ground, were full of a shared proclivity.

"We shouldn't have come," he swallowed, taking Chessa's hand, "without DG."

-x-

XLVII.

The superiority never lifted from Ambrose. It walked with him wherever he went, through woods and vale, sunshine, sunset. He met it smiling, triumphant, wanting to weep with the gladness of liberation. This was his escape, his escapade into frontiers unknown. He had left Glitch to do the work, to find out what he and the others might know of the spell, the path of bone, the witch who bore the symbols needed to carry the cost of conjuration. Glitch had found these things, and Ambrose had taken them.

He beat Glitch to within an inch of his life. Throwing him against trees. "Shut UP, you idiotic idiot! Shut up, fool!" And toss him again, again, to bark that began to take a blood red hue.

"I'll be good," Glitch murmured between huffs that he would not permit to be sobs. "I swear, I swear, I'll behave. I won't say a word, not a single, single word… Just stop, Ambrose, stop flinging me into things… Things that don't move, things that hurt me." He could hardly walk, imbalanced then, stumbling now, scurrying in an crooked line to Ambrose. Night began to fall, and Ambrose sometimes vanished into it, becoming too swarthy, and the skirts of his greatcoat fuliginous. Ink from the earth seemed to leak from pits and dents, to swallow Ambrose bit by bit. Never whole, but to inhume him limb by limb. Glitch squinted, eyes petering out, and crashing to the cold loam. He whimpered, sure that Ambrose would stomp back, rousing mad, with perfervid derisions, recalcitrant to Glitch's need for release.

But Ambrose delayed, not hesitating from kindness, for he possessed none. But hesitating to watch Glitch, the shape of him splayed across renitent ground. Compassion, if he met it at all, was a truant, ungodly source to be filed away under the guises of insanity. Sympathy, if he met it, too, met with a treatment very much the same.

He had to find the witch first, and destroy her.

"So I can get rid of you," he said to Glitch, standing over him, looking down into the face of the living creature that possessed everything he didn't. "Goodness, kindness, love, health—and fear."

Glitch heard the words between the beats in his ears, the murmurs inaudible to his captor. Love and fear were incorrect.

Sorry, my dear, but you'll never have me if you think that love and fear have only me.

Glitch rolled upon his back. Ambrose was out of his sight. The stars shone down, unveiled, cold, bold, too beautiful to be frightened of the emptiness surrounding them. He wanted Wyatt. He wanted DG. He wanted this over so he could be left in peace. No matter how it ended. What did death matter now? He could die and float away, into the stars and lay among nebulae forever.

"Don't you love me?" he asked of Ambrose.

"Only as a moth loves flame."

"Out of need."

"Out of a needful hate."

"I want Wyatt. Where have we put him?"

"Wyatt is dead. Wyatt has always been dead." Ambrose knelt, cuddling Glitch. Poor, sodden Glitch, damp with the dew of the grasses, as though he had lain for hours, hours, and watched the stars weep until their tears fell into drops of dew. "You have me… I'm here. I'm here."

"Where's DG?"

"DG is dead." He wrapped the greatcoat tails around his shimmering companion. "DG has always been dead. You remember that."

"I do…" Glitch nodded, squinting to bring more blankness to the night. "I do remember. A funeral. The scent of rose oil. The fire where I burned lilies. If I could burn all the lilies of all the world, I would. I would travel far and wide, a scorcher of lilies. There shouldn't be lilies in the world without her in the world. I'm so very, very cold, Ambrose. But that's because I remember…"

He lost all of it then. What he had come for. What he had been given. He had Ambrose. Ambrose would look out for him.

"Do not leave me." Glitch punctured the solemn night air with the immediacy of his need. "Do not leave me here on this strange road alone. Even the stars don't know me now, and I don't know them."

"I'm staying."

"Until when?"

"Until one of us is dead."

Glitch smiled, a soft nod following. "Good… Good… That is what I would wish."

-x-

XLVIII.

DG was not to be found in the morning by those sent in search of her. When discovered to be absent from her room, the Queen was told, and the mice dispatched to search for her. Poised before the front window of her office, looking out across the city, the cylinders of buildings, the softness of angled roads across the hill, the darkness where the shadowed layers slept, the Queen found a viable annoyance with her youngest. She swept back stray grey hairs, a gift of magic for the gift of life, and did what she had learned to do for twenty annuals: wait. Ahamo supported the unwanted notion that DG had run off, in spite of her injuries. The Queen, at first, wouldn't hear of it.

"She has more sense than that."

"No one has sense when it comes to love," Ahamo argued. The Queen might love DG, and show it more, in divers ways—but Ahamo understood DG better, as his wife understood Azkadellia's pain. "These are her friends, and we cannot forget that Chessa is out there as well. I do not pretend to know the nuances of their relationship," his face went into his palms, "but they are friends if they are not lovers. And if I had to sail to the bottoms of oceans to save a friend," he tried to shirk the sting that then came to him, "I would do it."

A knock preceded the entrance of Zero. He bowed, and divulged his information and resource. "I have checked the stables and garages. The princess hasn't taken a horse or car."

"She is on foot." Ahamo angled to the Queen. "Let me send out the knights. They'll scour the circumference of the city, and not return until they have found her, or been summoned back."

The Queen stood, deep in thought, penetrating gaze over the cityscape. She inhaled deeply, kneading fingers into fists. "Fine. Captain, assemble a small search party, and look for my daughter. I will not expect your return if she is not with you."

Again, a reverential tip from Zero, then a silent withdrawal. Disgusted with herself, the Queen retreated to the rim of her desk, lowered to it, arms folded.

"I will not relent," she was tired of those words. It was so rare that Ahamo changed his mind about anything. If only she could change her mind about Zero. "It is bad enough that we consented for DG to marry an Issilthrush Cain. But we cannot allow our eldest to marry the captain of the guard. He was by her side when she—when she ruled the realm beneath blood and sorcery."

"You accuse him, now, of being a man of questionable venality? He stood by her side then, and stays by her side now because he loves her. A man in such a position can do nothing else—!"

"No man can be redeemed through love and a song! Where does that happen? In the poetry of old monarchs, but not in this age. You see it as well as I do. It will never last."

"That is an inarguable phrase. Zero may die still, we don't know, and we are not the ones who can decide that. But why are you always convinced that there is only one way to love someone? Because we have been fortunate in the ways of our hearts doesn't mean that others will experience the same. Should they? No… No. I don't believe they should."

He turned away, taking leave of her, while words of protest stuck in her throat.


End file.
